SwiftVerbalExpressions

Swift Regular Expressions made easy

SwiftVerbalExpressions is a Swift library that helps to construct difficult regular expressions - ported from the awesome JavaScript VerbalExpressions.

Examples

Here's a couple of simple examples to give an idea of how VerbalExpressions works:

Testing if we have a valid URL

// Create an example of how to test for correctly formed URLs
let tester = VerEx()
    .startOfLine()
    .then("http")
    .maybe("s")
    .then("://")
    .maybe("www")
    .anythingBut(" ")
    .endOfLine()

// Create an example URL
let testMe = "https://www.google.com"

// Use test() method
if tester.test(testMe) {
    print("We have a correct URL") // This output will fire
}
else {
    print("The URL is incorrect")
}

// Use =~ operator
if testMe =~ tester {
    print("We have a correct URL") // This output will fire
}
else {
    print("The URL is incorrect")
}

prin(tester) // Outputs the actual expression used: "^(?:http)(?:s)?(?::\/\/)(?:www)?(?:[^ ]*)$"

Replacing strings

let replaceMe = "Replace bird with a duck"

// Create an expression that seeks for word "bird"
let verEx = VerEx().find("bird")

// Execute the expression like a normal RegExp object
let result = verEx.replace(replaceMe, with: "duck")

print(result) // Outputs "Replace duck with a duck"

Shorthand for string replace:

let result2 = VerEx().find("red").replace("We have a red house", with: "blue")

print(result2) // Outputs "We have a blue house"

API documentation

You can find the documentation for the original JavaScript repo on their wiki.

Contributions

Clone the repo and fork! Pull requests are warmly welcome!

Thanks!

Thank you to @jehna for coming up with the awesome original idea!
Thank you to @kishikawakatsumi for ObjectiveCVerbalExpressions from which I borrowed some code!

Other implementations

You can view all implementations on VerbalExpressions.github.io

Installation and use

This version is under testing, but it supports Swift Package Manager. Therefore it can be included in the project with:

        .package(
            url: "https://github.com/VerbalExpressions/SwiftVerbalExpressions.git",
            from: "

And:

        .target(
            name: "YourProject",
            dependencies: ["VerbalExpressions"]),