Quickstart

Installation

pip install replus

or clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/biagiodistefano/replus.git

cd to the directory

cd replus

and then run

python setup.py install

Template creation

The Engine loads Regular Expression pattern templates written in *.json files from the provided directory, builds and compiles them in the following fashion:

example of template patterns/date.json:

{
  "day": [
    "3[01]",
    "[12][0-9]",
    "0?[1-9]"
  ],
  "month": [
    "0?[1-9]",
    "1[012]"
  ],
  "year": [
    "\\d{4}"
  ],
  "date": [
    "{{day}}/{{month}}/{{year}}",
    "{{year}}-{{month}}-{{day}}"
  ],
  "$PATTERNS": [
    "{{date}}"
  ]
}

will result in the following regex:

(?P<date_0>(?P<day_0>[12][0-9]|0?[1-9]|3[01])/(?P<month_0>0?[1-9]|1[012])/(?P<year_0>\d{4})|(?P<year_1>\d{4})-(?P<month_1>0?[1-9]|1[012])-(?P<day_1>[12][0-9]|0?[1-9]|3[01]))

Only the patterns under $PATTERNS will be matched against at runtime.

Querying

It is possible to query as follows:

from replus import Replus

engine = Replus('patterns')

for match in engine.parse("Look at this date: 2012-20-10"):
    print(match)
    # <[Match date] span(19, 29): 2012-12-10>

    date = match.group('date')
    print(date)
    # <[Group date_0] span(19, 29) @0: 2012-12-10>

    day = date.group('day')
    print(day)
    # <[Group day_1] span(27, 29) @0: 10>

    month = date.group('month')
    print(month)
    # <[Group month_1] span(24, 26) @0: 12>

    year = date.group('year')
    print(year)
    # [Group year_1] span(19, 23) @0: 2012>

Filtering

it is possible to filter regexes by type, being the type given by the json’s filename’s stem. E.g., in the above example, results matched by the patterns under patterns/date.json’s $PATTERNS will have type date

filters = ["date", "cities"]
for match in engine.parse(my_string, *filters):
    # do stuff

Extra features

There are four useful secondary features:

non-capturing groups: these are declared by using the ?: prefix
in the group name or key. Beware: can cause con
atomic groups: these are declared by using the ?> prefix
in the group name or key
group inline modifiers: these are declared by using the syntax ?i:.
Beware: only one modifier at a time is supported at the moment.
dynamic backreferences: use # to reference a previous group
and @<n> to specify how many groups behind

template:

{
  "?:number": [
    "\\d"
  ],
  "abg": [
    "alpha",
    "beta",
    "gamma"
  ],
  "spam": [
     "spam"
   ],
   "eggs": [
     "eggs"
   ],
  "$PATTERNS": [
    "This is an unnamed number group: {{number}}.",
    "I can match {{abg}} and {{abg}}, and then re-match the last {{#abg}} or the second last {{#abg@2}}",
    "Here is some {{?:spam}} and some {{?>eggs}}"
  ]
}

It will generate the following regexs:

This is an unnamed number group: (?:\d).

I can match (?P<abg_0>alpha|beta|gamma) and (?P<abg_1>alpha|beta|gamma), and then re-match the last (?P=abg_1) or the second last (?P=abg_0)

Here is some (?:spam) and some (?>eggs)

N.B.: in order to obtain an escape char, such as \d, in the pattern’s model it must be double escaped: \\d