Question

I am trying to parse a html document using javascript, its getting late and I am struggling a bit with the regex’s.

I have a document that contains the following:

<table>
{% for field in fields %}
<tr><td>{{field.label}}</td><td>{{field.value}}</td></tr>                   
{% endfor %}
</table>

Now i want to somehow select everything between {% for field in fields %} and {% endfor %} so that I can insert some fake figure into the label and value fields. Then I want to duplicate this section a few times so that it creates the wanted dummy output. Does anyone know an easy way to select everything between the for and endfor loop tags?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

var regex = /(?:{% for field in fields %})([\s\S]*?)(?:{% endfor %})/gim;

var contents = regex.exec(test)[1];

Brief explanation of regex…

(?:{% for field in fields %}) : Non capturing group (?:) to match opening “tag”

([\s\S]*?) : [\s\S] matches any character in JS regex (including newline) * matches 0 or more instances of the preceeding character class ? makes the match lazy (so in this example it won’t potentially eat up a closing tag)

(?:{% endfor %}) : Non capturing group (?:) to match closing “tag”

Flags gim – global (ie match all in the input string) / case insensitive / multiline