Regex matching HTML option tags which are unselected and also selected

Question

Can some recommend a regex to return the value when an item is selected as well as unselected as seen below.

<option value="32_1002_ACCT1001" selected="selected">ACCT1001 -- Accounting 1a</option>
<option value="32_1002_ACCT1002">ACCT1002 -- Accounting 1b</option>

My regex currently works only for the unselected option seen below.

(<option value="([^"]+)">([^<]+)<\/option>)

EDIT:

Thanks for the great responses guys, however I should have been a bit more detailed and specific.

I am using it in a screen-scraper extractor pattern as follows:

<option value="~@COURSE_ID@~">~@COURSE_CODE@~ -- ~@COURSE_NAME@~</option>

where ~@COURSE_ID@~ specifies the following regex query:

([^"]+)

Works fine for all option tags EXCEPT the first one which is already selected.

I am testing out your suggestions at the moment, but if anyone wants to jump in with a sure fire solution that would be great.

I'm really struggling with this one, nothing seems to be working!

Answer 1

First, its bad idea to use regex for parsing HTML. Use some html parser. (I am tired of writing this, but I just put it as a first sentence as people tend to downvote immediately without this statement :) )

Anyways, just modify your regex to account for all attributes like this

(<option[^>]*?>([^<]+)<\/option>)

Well, I dont say its an optimal one, its just with minimal modifications to yours

Answer 2

Here's an alternative way to load these values in C# using the Html Agility Pack:

HtmlWeb web = new HtmlWeb();
HtmlDocument doc = web.Load("http://jsbin.com/unasu/");
HtmlNodeCollection options = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//option[@value]");
IEnumerable<string> values = options.Select(o => o.Attributes["value"].Value);

Loading a local file, for completeness, is done using:

HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.Load(@"c:\file.html");

As clearly seen, this solution is a lot more robust than a regex - it won't fail with most code, doesn't care about attributes order, quote formats (single double or none), and many, many more common cases.

Answer 3

I agree with Kobi but if you really want to use regex here is a solution in perl :

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

while (<DATA>) {
    print $_;
    if (/^(<option value="([^"]+).*?(?:selected="selected")?.*)$/) {
        print "match\t value=$2\n";
    } else {
        print "NOT match\n";
    }
}

__DATA__
<option value="32_1002_ACCT1001" selected="selected">ACCT1001 -- Accounting 1a</option>
<option value="32_1002_ACCT1002">ACCT1002 -- Accounting 1b</option>

output :

<option value="32_1002_ACCT1001" selected="selected">ACCT1001 -- Accounting 1a</option>
match    value=32_1002_ACCT1001
<option value="32_1002_ACCT1002">ACCT1002 -- Accounting 1b</option>
match    value=32_1002_ACCT1002