Replace Tester

Motivation

You want to build a form that will allow you quickly test replacement regular expressions using XQuery's replace function.

Screen Image

Link to Working Application

Replace Test

Sample Program

<html 
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:xf="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"
 xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
  xmlns:ev="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events" >
    <head>
        <style type="text/css">
        @namespace xf url("http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms");
        body {font-family: Ariel, Helvetica, san-serif}

/* Input controls appear on their own lines. */
xf|input, xf|select, xf|select1, xf|textarea 
{display:block; margin:5px 0;}

/* Makes the labels right aligned in a 150px wide column that floats to the left of the input controls. */
xf|input > xf|label, xf|select > xf|label, xf|select1 > xf|label, xf|textarea > xf|label, xf|output > xf|label 
{font-weight: bold;text-align:right; padding-right:10px; width:150px; float:left; text-align:right;}

/* make the input boxes a little wider */
.xf-value {width: 200px}

       </style>
        <xf:model>
            <xf:instance id="request" xmlns="">
                <data>
                     <input>abcdefghi</input>
                     <pattern>def</pattern>
                     <replacement>123</replacement>
                </data>
            </xf:instance>
             <xf:instance id="response" xmlns="">
                <data/>
            </xf:instance>
            <xf:submission id="submit" method="get" action="http://localhost:8080/exist/rest/db/test/replace/replace.xq" replace="instance" instance="response"
            separator="&amp;">
               <xf:toggle case="case-busy" ev:event="xforms-submit" />
               <xf:toggle case="case-submit-error" ev:event="xforms-submit-error" />
               <xf:toggle case="case-done" ev:event="xforms-submit-done" />
            </xf:submission>
        </xf:model>
    </head>
    <body>
    <h1>XForms Replace Tester</h1>
        <xf:input ref="input">
            <xf:label>Input:</xf:label>
        </xf:input>
        <xf:input ref="pattern">
            <xf:label>Pattern:</xf:label>
        </xf:input>
        <xf:input ref="replacement">
            <xf:label>Replacement:</xf:label>
        </xf:input>
        <xf:switch>
           <xf:case id="ready">
           <xf:submit submission="submit">
              <xf:label>Submit</xf:label>
           </xf:submit>
            <xf:submit submission="echo-test">
              <xf:label>Echo Test</xf:label>
           </xf:submit>
           </xf:case>
           <xf:case id="case-busy">
              <p>Waiting for response...</p>
           </xf:case>
           <xf:case id="case-submit-error">
              <p>The server has returned a submit error event.</p>
           </xf:case>
            <xf:case id="case-done">
              <xf:output ref="instance('response')/replace-result/text()">
                 <xf:label>Result:</xf:label>
              </xf:output>
           </xf:case>
        </xf:switch>
    </body>
</html>

XQuery Replace Tester

If you are using eXist, just place this file on the server in the same folder as your XForms test driver.

In the example above I used a test folder on the localhost:

http://localhost:8080/exist/rest/db/test/replace/replace.xq

xquery version "1.0";
declare namespace exist = "http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist"; 
declare namespace system="http://exist-db.org/xquery/system";
declare namespace request="http://exist-db.org/xquery/request";
declare option exist:serialize "method=xml media-type=text/xml indent=yes";
(: replace demo :)
let $input := request:get-parameter('input', '')
let $pattern  := request:get-parameter('pattern', '')
let $replacement := request:get-parameter('replacement', '')

return
<results>
   <input>{$input }</input>
   <pattern>{$pattern}</pattern>
   <replacement>{$replacement}</replacement>
   <replace-result>{replace($input , $pattern, $replacement)}</replace-result>
</results>

Discussion

This shows that you can quickly built tools to teach yourself complex functions like regular expression handling. You can also use the XQuery match function with returns a true/false if the regular expression matches an input string.

There are two variations of this example that are interesting. The first is where you replace the input form with a large text area for doing global replacements of large blocks of text. The second is where you replace the patten input box with a selection list with common replacement patterns.

References

Examples of replacement functions can be found here:

w3c replace examples

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