VerbalExpressions/PHPVerbalExpressions

PHPVerbalExpressions

• ported from VerbalExpressions

VerbalExpressions is a PHP library that helps to construct hard regular expressions.

Installation

The project supports Composer so you have to install Composer first, before project setup.

$ composer require  verbalexpressions/php-verbal-expressions:dev-master

Examples

<?php
// some tests
require './vendor/autoload.php';
use VerbalExpressions\PHPVerbalExpressions\VerbalExpressions;

$regex = new VerbalExpressions();

$regex->startOfLine()
      ->then("http")
      ->maybe("s")
      ->then("://")
      ->maybe("www.")
      ->anythingBut(" ")
      ->endOfLine();


if ($regex->test("http://github.com")) {
    echo "valid url". '<br>';
} else {
    echo "invalid url". '<br>';
}

if (preg_match($regex, 'http://github.com')) {
    echo 'valid url';
} else {
    echo 'invalid url';
}


echo "<pre>". $regex->getRegex() ."</pre>";

echo $regex->clean(array("modifiers" => "m", "replaceLimit" => 4))
           ->find(' ')
           ->replace("This is a small test http://somesite.com and some more text.", "-");

More examples are available in the following files:

• Example.php
• VerbalExpressionsTest.php

Business readable language expression definition

$definition = 'start, then "http", maybe "s", then "://", maybe "www.", anything but " ", end';
$regex = new VerbalExpressionsScenario($definition);

Methods list

Name	Description	Usage
add	add values to the expression	add('abc')
startOfLine	mark expression with ^	startOfLine(false)
endOfLine	mark the expression with $	endOfLine()
then	add a string to the expression	add('foo')
find	alias for then	find('foo')
maybe	define a string that might appear once or not	maybe('.com')
anything	accept any string	anything()
anythingBut	accept any string but the specified char	anythingBut(',')
something	accept any non-empty string	something()
somethingBut	anything non-empty except for these chars	somethingBut('a')
replace	shorthand for preg_replace()	replace($source, $val)
lineBreak	match \r \n	lineBreak()
br	shorthand for lineBreak	br()
tab	match tabs \t	tab()
word	match \w+	word()
anyOf	any of the listed chars	anyOf('abc')
any	shorthand for anyOf	any('abc')
range	adds a range to the expression	range(a,z,0,9)
withAnyCase	match case default case sensitive	withAnyCase()
stopAtFirst	toggles the g modifiers	stopAtFirst()
addModifier	add a modifier	addModifier('g')
removeModifier	remove a mofier	removeModifier('g')
searchOneLine	Toggles m modifier	searchOneLine()
multiple	adds the multiple modifier	multiple('*')
_or	wraps the expression in an or with the provided value	_or('bar')
limit	adds char limit	limit(1,3)
test	performs a preg_match	test('valid@email.com')

For all the above method (except test) you could use the VerbalExpressionsScenario.

Other Implementations

You can see an up to date list of all ports on VerbalExpressions.github.io.

• Javascript
• Ruby
• C#
• Python
• Java
• C++

Building the project and running the tests

The project supports Composer so you have to install Composer first before project setup.

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
php composer.phar install --dev
ln -s vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit.php phpunit
./phpunit