This module provides two fluent builder APIs to make regex patterns. One is used for piecewise building of a RegExp, while the other is used to create extended regexes from user-defined string templates.

RegexBuilder

import { Regex } from 'https://deno.land/x/regexbuilder/mod.ts';

Regex.new().add('foo').add('bar');     >> /foobar/

Regex.new().capture('foo');    >> /(foo)/
Regex.new().noncapture('bar');    >> /(?:bar)/

Regex.new().group('cg', 'foo');    >> /(foo)/

Regex.new().namedGroup('foo', 'bar');    >> /(?<foo>bar)/

PatternBuilder

provides a methodology for building regexes according to templates and can be used to manage the complexity of handling lengthy patterns.

import { Pattern } from 'https://deno.land/x/regexbuilder/mod.ts';

let pattern = Pattern.new()
    .settings({
        template: '(greetings) (?=regions)',
        flags: 'i'
    })
    .data({
        greetings: [ 'hello', 'good morning', 'howdy' ],
        regions: [ 'world', 'new york', '{{foo}}' ]
    })
    .placeholders({ foo: ['bar'] })
    .build();

Templates

Give a name to any arbitrary part of a pattern, whether they are inside a capture group or not. Any word in the template will be substituted with the values of the corresponding key in the data. Any array in the data will be joined with pipe | symbols to create alternates.

.settings({
    template: 'field_names[: ]+(field_values)'
})
.data({
    field_names: ['Product Volume', 'volume']
    field_values: [ '100ml', '5L', '\\d{1,4}[cml]']
})

Placeholders

Declare a set of placeholders to be reused in multiple patterns:

const ph = {
    foo: ['bar', 'baz'],
};

Pattern.new()
    // ..
    .placeholders(ph)

Exceptions

Exclude values you know you don’t want in your match results. Note that this will restructure your template as exclude|({the-rest-of-the-template}) and place any desired full match in capture group 1 while adding exclusions to group 0.

Pattern.new()
    .settings({ template: 'years'})
    .data({ years: String.raw`20\d{2}` })
    .except(["2000"])

The pattern above will build to /2000|(20\d{2})/.

Wildcards

Add a wildcard to be searched for after a set of known values. Note that this will restructure your template as {the-rest-of-the-template}|(wildcard), adding a capture group but not changing the order of existing ones.

Pattern.new()
    .settings({ template: 'years'})
    .data({ years: ['2018', '2019', '2020'] })
    .wildcard([String.raw`20\d{2}\b`])

The pattern above will build to /2018|2019|2020|(20\d{2})/. Any matched wildcard year will be placed in group 1.