Question

I have a variable that contains a long string that represents an XML document. Within that string, I need to search for every self-closing tag and expand into two matching opening/closing tags. I’m really not sure how to tackle this and would appreciate your advice. At this point, all I know is how to match a self-closing tag via regex: [^<]+?/> Here’s a short example of what I would like to accomplish:

ORIGINAL STRING:

<outer-tag>
    <inner-tag-1>
        <SELF-CLOSING-TAG-1 foo="bar"/>
        <SELF-CLOSING-TAG-2/>
    </inner-tag-1>
    <inner-tag-2>
        <SELF-CLOSING-TAG-3 attr="value"/>
    </inner-tag-2>
</outer-tag>

MODIFIED STRING:

<outer-tag>
    <inner-tag-1>
        <SELF-CLOSING-TAG-1 foo="bar"></SELF-CLOSING-TAG-1>
        <SELF-CLOSING-TAG-2></SELF-CLOSING-TAG-2>
    </inner-tag-1>
    <inner-tag-2>
        <SELF-CLOSING-TAG-3 attr="value"></SELF-CLOSING-TAG-3>
    </inner-tag-2>
</outer-tag>

Answer 1

I have used the w3 specifications to create a regexp which correctly parses tags in well-formed XML.

First, select the characters which define the start-tag (per specs). Then, match the remaining characters, excluding possibly trailing spaced and />. Globally replace the matched substrings by
"<" + starttag + remaining + "></" + starttag + ">". See below:

//According to the W3 spec: 
var pattern = /<([:A-Z_a-z\xC0-\xD6\xD8-\xF6\xF8-\u02FF\u0370-\u037D\u037F-\u1FFF\u200C-\u200D\u2070-\u218F\u2C00-\u2FEF\u3001-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFFD][-.0-9\xB7\u0300-\u036F\u0203F-\u2040]*)([^>]*?)\s*?\/>/g;
string.replace(pattern, '<$1$2></$1>');