The hexpress gem is another take at the concept of "Verbal Hexpressions" in Ruby.

Using

require "hexpress" pattern = Hexpress . new pattern = Hexpress . new . start ( "http" ) . maybe ( "s" ) . with ( "://" ) . maybe { words . with ( "." ) } . find { matching { [ word , "-" ] } . multiple } . has ( "." ) . either ( "com" , "org" ) . maybe ( "/" ) . ending

After requiring hexpress you'll have access to the Hexpress class, which allows you to chain methods to build up a regex pattern.

You can see this pattern by calling either Hexpress#to_s or Hexpress#to_r :

pattern . to_s #=> "^http(?:s)?://(?:(?:\\w)+\\.)?([\\w\\-]+)\\.(?:com|org)(?:/)?$" pattern . to_r #=> /^http(?:s)?:\/\/(?:(?:\w)+\.)?([\w\-]+)\.(?:com|org)(?:\/)?$/

You can also get access to a global method by doing the following (automatically done in any rails application):

require_relative "hexpress/main" hexp . start ( "http" ) . maybe ( "s" ) hexp do start ( "http" ) maybe ( "s" ) end

In addition we've bundled an extra set of helpers for specific use cases like the web:

require "hexpress" require "hexpress/web" pattern = hexp . http . domain ( "amazon" ) . tld ( "com" ) pattern = hexp . ftp # ...

You can even do advanced composure of multiple patterns:

protocol = exp . start ( "http" ) . maybe ( "s" ) . with ( "://" ) tld = exp . then ( "." ) . either ( "org" , "com" , "net" ) link = exp . has ( protocol ) . find { words } . including ( tld )

It's also entirely feasible to compound two or more patterns together:

protocol = exp . start ( "http" ) . maybe ( "s" ) . with ( "://" ) domain = exp . find { words } tld = exp . then ( "." ) . either ( "org" , "com" , "net" ) link = protocol + domain + tld

Hexpressions are very flexible.

Installing

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "hexpress", "~> 1.0"

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install hexpress

Contributing

Fork it Create your feature branch ( git checkout -b my-new-feature ) Commit your changes ( git commit -am 'Add some feature' ) Push to the branch ( git push origin my-new-feature ) Create new Pull Request

Licensing

Copyright (c) 2013 Kurtis Rainbolt-Greene

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.