I couldn't resist to implement this task of writing a CSS parser in a completely different way. I have split the task of parsing into many small ones.
- The smallest is called
skipWhitespace, since you will need it everywhere when parsing text files.
- The next one is
parseProperty, which reads one property of the form name:value;.
- Based on that,
parseSelector reads a complete CSS selector, starting with the selector name, an opening brace, possibly many properties, and finishing with the closing brace.
- Still based on that,
parseFile reads a complete file, consisting of possibly many selectors.
Note how carefully I checked whether the index is small enough. I did that before every access to the chars array.
I used LinkedHashMaps to save the properties and the selectors, because these kinds of maps remember in which order the things have been inserted. Normal HashMaps don't do that.
The task of parsing a text file is generally quite complex, and this program only attempts to handle the basics of CSS. If you need a full CSS parser, you should definitely look for a ready-made one. This one cannot handle @media or similar things where you have nested blocks. But it shouldn't bee too difficult to add it to the existing code.
This parser will not handle CSS comments very well. It only expects them at a few places. If comments appear in other places, the parser will not treat them as comments.
import java.util.LinkedHashMap;
import java.util.Map;
public class CssParser {
private final char[] chars;
private int index;
public Debugger(String code) {
this.chars = code.toCharArray();
this.index = 0;
}
private void skipWhitespace() {
/*
* Here you should also skip comments in the CSS file, which either look
* like this comment or start with a // and go until the end of line.
*/
while (index < chars.length && Character.isWhitespace(chars[index]))
index++;
}
private void parseProperty(String selector, Map<String, String> properties) {
skipWhitespace();
// get the CSS property name
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
while (index < chars.length && chars[index] != ':')
sb.append(chars[index++]);
String propertyName = sb.toString().trim();
if (index == chars.length)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Expected a colon at index " + index + ".");
// skip the colon
index++;
// get the CSS property value
sb.setLength(0);
while (index < chars.length && chars[index] != ';' && chars[index] != '}')
sb.append(chars[index++]);
String propertyValue = sb.toString().trim();
/*
* Here is the check for duplicate property definitions. The method
* Map.put(Object, Object) always returns the value that had been stored
* under the given name before.
*/
String previousValue = properties.put(propertyName, propertyValue);
if (previousValue != null)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Duplicate property \"" + propertyName + "\" in selector \"" + selector + "\".");
if (index < chars.length && chars[index] == ';')
index++;
skipWhitespace();
}
private void parseSelector(Map<String, Map<String, String>> selectors) {
skipWhitespace();
// get the CSS selector
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
while (index < chars.length && chars[index] != '{')
sb.append(chars[index++]);
String selector = sb.toString().trim();
if (index == chars.length)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("CSS Selector name \"" + selector + "\" without content.");
// skip the opening brace
index++;
skipWhitespace();
Map<String, String> properties = new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();
selectors.put(selector, properties);
while (index < chars.length && chars[index] != '}') {
parseProperty(selector, properties);
skipWhitespace();
}
// skip the closing brace
index++;
}
private Map<String, Map<String, String>> parseFile() {
Map<String, Map<String, String>> selectors = new LinkedHashMap<String, Map<String, String>>();
while (index < chars.length) {
parseSelector(selectors);
skipWhitespace();
}
return selectors;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
CssParser parser = new CssParser("body {margin:prueba;A:B;a:Arial, Courier New, \"monospace\";\n}");
Map<String, Map<String, String>> selectors = parser.parseFile();
System.out.println("There are " + selectors.size() + " selectors.");
for (Map.Entry<String, Map<String, String>> entry : selectors.entrySet()) {
String selector = entry.getKey();
Map<String, String> properties = entry.getValue();
System.out.println("Selector " + selector + ":");
for (Map.Entry<String, String> property : properties.entrySet()) {
String name = property.getKey();
String value = property.getValue();
System.out.println(" Property name \"" + name + "\" value \"" + value + "\"");
}
}
}
}