README.md

ElixirVerbalExpressions

Elixir Regular Expressions made easy. Ported from the JavaScript version VerbalExpressions.

How to get started

Include the VerbalExpressions module (and alias it, if you want). Then simply check out the Examples and documentation to get started. It's easy :)

Examples

Here's a couple of simple examples to give an idea of how VerbalExpressions works:

Testing if we have a valid URL

# Create an example of how to test for correctly formed URLs
alias VerbalExpressions, as: VerEx
tester = VerEx.startOfLine()
         |> VerEx.then("http")
         |> VerEx.maybe("s")
         |> VerEx.then("://")
         |> VerEx.maybe("www")
         |> VerEx.anythingBut(" ")
         |> VerEx.endOfLine()
         
testMe = "https://www.google.com"

result = tester |> VerEx.match?(testMe)

if result do
  IO.puts "Valid URL :)"
else
  IO.puts "Invalid URL :("
end

Replacing strings

# Create a test string
replaceMe = "Replace bird with a duck"

# Create an expression that seeks for word "bird"
expression = VerEx.find "bird"

# Execute the expression like a normal RegExp object
result = expression |> VerEx.replace replaceMe, "duck"

IO.puts result # Outputs "Replace duck with a duck"

Shorthand for string replace:

result = VerEx.find("red") |> VerEx.replace "We have a red house", "blue"

IO.puts result # Outputs "We have a blue house"

Method chaining

The original version of VerbalExpressions uses method chaining. This version of verbal expressions in Elixir does not only support the (nicer) |>-based chaining, but also has a record-based version for method-chaining support.

Here is the above string replace example using method chaining:

v = VerbalExpressionRecord.new
result = v.find("red").replace("We have a red house", "blue")

IO.puts result # Outputs "We have a blue house"

API documentation

You can find the API documentation on it's own page.

Contributions

Pull requests are welcome.

Issues

Please report any issues to the GitHub issuetracker.

Thanks

Thank you to @jehna for coming up with the awesome original idea!