vault/PHPVerbalExpressions: PHP Regular expressions made easy

PHPVerbalExpressions

ported from VerbalExpressions

VerbalExpressions is a PHP library that helps to construct hard regular expressions.

Installation

The project supports Composer so you have to install Composer first, before project setup.

$ composer require  verbalexpressions/php-verbal-expressions:dev-master

Examples

<?php
// some tests
require './vendor/autoload.php';
use VerbalExpressions\PHPVerbalExpressions\VerbalExpressions;

$regex = new VerbalExpressions();

$regex->startOfLine()
      ->then("http")
      ->maybe("s")
      ->then("://")
      ->maybe("www.")
      ->anythingBut(" ")
      ->endOfLine();


if ($regex->test("http://github.com")) {
    echo "valid url". '<br>';
} else {
    echo "invalid url". '<br>';
}

if (preg_match($regex, 'http://github.com')) {
    echo 'valid url';
} else {
    echo 'invalid url';
}


echo "<pre>". $regex->getRegex() ."</pre>";

echo $regex->clean(array("modifiers" => "m", "replaceLimit" => 4))
           ->find(' ')
           ->replace("This is a small test http://somesite.com and some more text.", "-");

More examples are available in the following files:

Business readable language expression definition

$definition = 'start, then "http", maybe "s", then "://", maybe "www.", anything but " ", end';
$regex = new VerbalExpressionsScenario($definition);

Methods list

Name	Description	Usage
add	add values to the expression	add(‘abc’)
startOfLine	mark expression with ^	startOfLine(false)
endOfLine	mark the expression with $	endOfLine()
then	add a string to the expression	add(‘foo’)
find	alias for then	find(‘foo’)
maybe	define a string that might appear once or not	maybe(‘.com’)
anything	accept any string	anything()
anythingBut	accept any string but the specified char	anythingBut(‘,’)
something	accept any non-empty string	something()
somethingBut	anything non-empty except for these chars	somethingBut(‘a’)
replace	shorthand for preg_replace()	replace($source, $val)
lineBreak	match \r \n	lineBreak()
br	shorthand for lineBreak	br()
tab	match tabs \t	tab()
word	match \w+	word()
anyOf	any of the listed chars	anyOf(‘abc’)
any	shorthand for anyOf	any(‘abc’)
range	adds a range to the expression	range(a,z,0,9)
withAnyCase	match case default case sensitive	withAnyCase()
stopAtFirst	toggles the g modifiers	stopAtFirst()
addModifier	add a modifier	addModifier(‘g’)
removeModifier	remove a mofier	removeModifier(‘g’)
searchOneLine	Toggles m modifier	searchOneLine()
multiple	adds the multiple modifier	multiple(‘*’)
_or	wraps the expression in an `or` with the provided value	_or(‘bar’)
limit	adds char limit	limit(1,3)
test	performs a preg_match	test(‘valid@email.com’)

For all the above method (except test) you could use the VerbalExpressionsScenario.

Other Implementations

You can see an up to date list of all ports on VerbalExpressions.github.io.

Building the project and running the tests

The project supports Composer so you have to install Composer first before project setup.

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
php composer.phar install --dev
ln -s vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit.php phpunit
./phpunit