Find everything between two XML tags with RegEx

Question

In RegEx  I want to find the tag and everything between two XML tags  like the following    lt primaryAddress gt       lt addressLine gt 280 Flinders Mall lt  addressLine gt       lt geoCodeGranularity gt PROPERTY lt  geoCodeGranularity gt       lt latitude gt -19 261365 lt  latitude gt       lt longitude gt 146 815585 lt  longitude gt       lt postcode gt 4810 lt  postcode gt       lt state gt QLD lt  state gt       lt suburb gt Townsville lt  suburb gt       lt type gt PHYSICAL lt  type gt   lt  primaryAddress gt    I want to find the tag and everything between primaryAddress  and erase that    Everything between the primaryAddress tag is a variable  but I want to remove the entire tag and sub-tags whenever I get primaryAddress   Anyone have any idea how to do that

User · Accepted Answer

It is not a good idea to use regex for HTML/XML parsing...

However, if you want to do it anyway, search for regex pattern

<primaryAddress>[\s\S]*?<\/primaryAddress>

and replace it with empty string...

User · Answer

this can capture most outermost layer pair of tags  even with attribute in side or without end tags    lt  --    -- gt     -- gt   lt  w        lt        gt   lt    lt tag gt  w     gt    gt    gt    lt     R    lt    k lt tag gt  s  gt     edit  as mentioned in comment above  regex is always not enough to parse xml  trying to modify the regex to fit more situation only makes it longer but still useless

User · Answer

It is not good to use this method but if you really want to split it with regex    lt primaryAddress   gt      n     lt   primaryAddress gt     the verified answer returns the tags but this just return the value between tags

User · Answer

In our case  we receive an XML as a String and need to get rid of the values that have some  quot special quot  characters  like  amp  lt  gt  etc  Basically someone can provide an XML to us in this form   lt notes gt     lt note gt        lt to gt jenice  amp  carl  lt  to gt        lt from gt your neighbor  lt    lt  from gt     lt  note gt   lt  notes gt   So I need to find in that String the values  jenice  amp  carl and your neighbor  lt   and properly escape  amp  and  lt   otherwise this is an invalid xml if you later pass it to an engine that shall rename unnamed   Doing this with regex is a rather dumb idea to begin with  but it s cheap and easy  So the brave ones that would like to do the same thing I did  here you go      String xml           Pattern p   Pattern compile  quot  lt      gt      R lt       lt     1  gt  quot        Matcher m   p matcher xml       String result   m replaceAll mr - gt            if  mr group 2  contains  quot  amp  quot                  return  quot  lt  quot    m group 1     quot  gt  quot    m group 2     quot   some change quot     quot  lt   quot    m group 3     quot  gt  quot                     return  quot  lt  quot    m group 1     quot  gt  quot    mr group 2     quot  lt   quot    m group 3     quot  gt  quot

User · Answer

You should be able to match it with    lt primaryAddress gt       lt   primaryAddress gt    The content between the tags will be in the matched group

[java] Find everything between two XML tags with RegEx

It is not a good idea to use regex for HTML/XML parsing...

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