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1447

answers:

3

My questions is: Is there a good solution to use regular expression in GWT?

I'm not satisfied with the use of String.split(regex) for example. GWT translates the Code to JS and then uses the regex as a JS regex. But I cannot use something like the Java Matcher or Java Pattern. But I would need these for group matching.

Is there any possibility or library?

I tried Jakarta Regexp, but I had other problems because GWT doesn't emulate all methods of the Java SDK this library uses.

I want to be able to use something like this on the client side:

// Compile and use regular expression
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternStr);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(inputStr);
boolean matchFound = matcher.find();

if (matchFound) {
    // Get all groups for this match
    for (int i=0; i<=matcher.groupCount(); i++) {
        String groupStr = matcher.group(i);
        System.out.println(groupStr);
    }
}
+3  A: 

If you want a pure GWT solution, I'm not sure it can be done. But if you're willing to use JSNI, you can use JavaScript's RegExp object to get the matched groups and all. You'll need to learn JSNI for GWT and JavaScript RegExp object.

Raze
i thought about that but i didn't found it a nice solution
Nitromouse
A: 

The GWTx library seems to provide an emulation of java.util.regex.Pattern and friends. It doesn't look complete (Matcher in particular), but might be a good start.

The technique they use to plug their own implementations of Java classes for the client side is the <super-source> declaration in module XML. It's mentioned in GWT docs, module XML format description under "Overriding one package implementation with another". Standard JRE translatable classes in GWT are emulated the same way.

hi i tried this library before. it is a nice solution for missing JRe emulation, but in this case it doens't support grouping. The methods for this are missing.
Nitromouse
+1  A: 

GWT 2.1 now has a RegExp class that might solve your problem:

Philippe Beaudoin