Question

I have a multiline XML blob in a Java String that I’d like to grep some values out of. I know that regexes and XML mix like crude oil and pasta, but I promise that I’m really not trying anything complicated.

Sample XML object String:

<ObjectDto>
  <created>1313825589244</created>
  <description>description</description>
  <id>649</id>
  <isFoo>true</isFoo>
<ObjectDto>

All I want is for object.matches("<isFoo>true</isFoo>") to evaluate to true. I’ve tried wrapping the meat of the regex in .* (and [\n.]* in case the newlines were throwing it), but no joy.

Why doesn’t it match?

Answer 1

I wasn’t matching newlines hard enough, turning on DOTALL (?s).*<isFoo>true</isFoo>.* fixed it.