Question

I am trying to limit the contents of an xml element using a regex pattern within the schema but I just cant get it working and the more I add the worse it seems to get.

The requirements are as follows:

• The element string can’t be longer that 512 characters (This bit’s easy but added for completeness)
• The string consists of multiple key value pairs.
• The key value pairs will be separated by ‘^’
• Each key value pair consists of a 3 character key, followed any number of characters for the value.
• The keys will be separated from the values by ‘|’

An example of the XML would be:

<myElement>
    ABC|This is some value text for key ABC^DEF|This is some value text for key DEF^GHI|This is some value text for key GHI^JKL|This is some value text for key JKL^
</myElement>

Answer 1

In the question you say “The key/value pairs will be separated by ‘^'”, but the example shows the key/value pairs terminated by ‘^’, so I’m assuming that’s what you want.

The key matches \w{3} (3 letters or digits).

The value matches [^^<]* (any number of any characters except ^).

The complete regex is (\w{3}\|[^^]*\^)*.