Angular RegEx matching injections

Question

I'm trying to write a regex matching every dependency for a angular 1.5 class. This is what I got so far:

\$inject = \[('([\w]+)'([,]?[\s]?))*

This is what is a couple of test lines:

MyController.$inject = ['service1', 'service2', 'service3'];

MyController
    .$inject = [
        'service1',
        'service2',
        'service3',
    ];

This should be the result:

match = ['service1', 'service2', 'service3'];

But my regex above will only fetch the last item: service3, and I don't know why. Can anybody help?

Update

Got it working here: http://regexr.com/3e6c2

Consider using Esprima to make matching easier and far more accurate than a regex. — rid
– rid, Commented Sep 8, 2016 at 7:38
I did not know about this parser. Thanks, but I want this to be lightweight. Throwing every file I pick up through this parser, will exchange the trouble of interpret the actual code file for having to interpret a resultset from this parser. I'm not sure this will bring value to what I'm trying to achieve. — Øystein Amundsen
– Øystein Amundsen, Commented Sep 8, 2016 at 8:28

SamWhan · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-08 08:10:40Z

1

The reason is that when you quantify a capture group, only the last one is captured. You allow 0-unlimited repetitions of the capture group with the *. You'll have to capture them individually for it to work.

For an illustration, see this example at regex101. Here I've repeated the capture group three times instead of having a quantifier, and thus all three groups get capture.

I've also made some of the groups non-capturing ((?:...) to avoid noise in the groups.

This works if there's an finite number of groups. If the number of groups is unknown/to large you'll have to solve it programmatically.

edited Sep 8, 2016 at 8:10

answered Sep 8, 2016 at 7:36

SamWhan

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5 Comments

Øystein Amundsen Over a year ago

So for an unknown capture group I have to do this in two steps? There is no way of capturing the comma separated list between [ and ]; in one step?

Øystein Amundsen Over a year ago

Perhaps it would be better to do this instead then: \$inject = \[([a-zA-Z0-9_,'\s]+)\], thus capturing everything, and trim the result using javascript replace or something...

SamWhan Over a year ago

Not to my knowledge. But I'm a bit confused - do you already have the result in an array? Or is it a string you're parsing?

Øystein Amundsen Over a year ago

I'm parsing an entire javascript code file. Trying to retreive what injections the file has. This is for a node script I'm writing.

SamWhan Over a year ago

Ok. I think you should do it in two steps then - first find the data between the [] (e.g. /\[([^]]*)\]/) and then String.match the separate items in quotes /'[^']*'/g and you'll have them in an array.

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