CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlregexexpressionnotepad++
Ian Ebstein
Ian Ebstein

Reputation: 95

Find/replace regex in Notepad to rearrange and close xml elements

I've got an xml file full facebook messages with elements that need to be rearranged and closed. The structure looks like this:

<john>
   <timestamp>Tuesday, August 7, 2012 at 3:53pm EDT</timestamp>
   <message>Cats or dogs?</message>
<hillary>
   <timestamp>Sunday, August 8, 2012 at 1:54am EST</timestamp>
   <message>Ugh, definitely dogs.</message>

The <john> and <hillary> tags need to be closed, and the <timestamp> and <message> elements need to be swapped:

<john>
   <message>Cats or dogs?</message>
   <timestamp>Tuesday, August 7, 2012 at 3:53pm EDT</timestamp>
</john>
<hillary>
   <message>Ugh, definitely dogs.</message>
   <timestamp>Sunday, August 8, 2012 at 1:54am EST</timestamp>
</hillary>

I'm new to regular expressions and am having such a hard time with this. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 842

Answers (2)

Casimir et Hippolyte
Casimir et Hippolyte

Reputation: 89584

You can try this:

search  : (<([^>]+)>(?:\s+|<([^>]+)>[^<]*</\3>)+)(?=(\r?\n)|$)
replace : $1$4</$2>

If needed, you can be more explicit:

search  : (<([^>]+)>(?:\s+|<(timestamp|message)>[^<]*</\3>)+)(?=(\r?\n)|$)
replace : $1$4</$2>

To place the message tags before the timestamp tags:

search  : (<message>[^<]*</message>)(\s*)(<timestamp>[^<]*</timestamp>)
replace : $3$2$1

Upvotes: 1

ianlgibbons
ianlgibbons

Reputation: 46

I've done an example for you here that will work for any name. 

Search: /<(.*?>)(.*?</message>)/gs

Replace: <$1$2\n</$1

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions