Javascript Regular Expression help

Question

Hello! I have got the following regular expression working just fine in Rad Software Regular Expression designer.

param\s+name\s*=\s*"movie"\s+value=\s*"(?<target>.*?)"

And now i am wondering, how to get this to work in javascript. It keeps on complaininge about the "target" part. I am trying to validate and get the url from the youtube embed code.

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ueZP6ifzqMY&amp;hl=sv_SE&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ueZP6ifzqMY&amp;hl=sv_SE&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

How the heck do i get this regex to work with my javascript? :)

Answer 1

Javascript doesn't have named capture. Use

param\s+name\s*=\s*"movie"\s+value=\s*"(.*?)"

Answer 2

Thanks for the fast answer! The named capture error is no more but i still can't get it to validate though.

It still works fine in regex designer and i get a match on the url. But not when i run it in javascript. I use the following code to validate.

var myregexp = new RegExp('param\s+name\s*=\s*"movie"\s+value=\s*"(.*?)"');
if (!$("#textbox-id").val().match(myregexp)) {
   errors += 'Youtube embedden code is wrong\n';
   $("#textbox-id").addClass("epluss-editor-input-error");
}  

I use the same object as above when trying to validate.

Answer 3

If you already have a JS framework like jQuery in your website, I recommend using it instead of regular expressions:

var movieUrl = $(your_html).find("object param[name=movie]").attr("value");
// "http://www.youtube.com/v/ueZP6ifzqMY&hl=sv_SE&fs=1&rel=0"

There are ways to do something similar with pure DOM JavaScript (if you have no framework), too. They result in slightly more code than regex, but are easier to maintain and less likely to fail.