String Regular Expressions with MooTools

By  on  

Whether you like given JavaScript library or not , there are always snippets you can take from the code which accomplish a task you may need to address.  We all know that I looooooove MooTools, but maybe you're a Dojo or jQuery developer that doesn't get a good look at Moo.  The following are a choice selection of regular expression used with MooTools -- maybe you have use for them?

Clean Whitespace

var newString = myString.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, '');

Camel-Case a Dash-Separated String

var newString = myString.replace(/-\D/g, function(match){
	return match.charAt(1).toUpperCase();
});

Dash-Separate a Camel-Cased String

var newString = myString.replace(/[A-Z]/g, function(match){
	return ('-' + match.charAt(0).toLowerCase());
});

Escape a Regular Expression

var newString = myString.replace(/([-.*+?^${}()|[\]\/\\])/g, '\\$1');

Hex to RGB, RGB to Hex

var hex = myString.match(/^#?(\w{1,2})(\w{1,2})(\w{1,2})$/);
var newString = (hex) ? hex.slice(1).hexToRgb(array) : null;

Term Substitution

var newString = this.replace(regexp || (/\\?\{([^{}]+)\}/g), function(match, name){
	if (match.charAt(0) == '\\') return match.slice(1);
	return (object[name] != undefined) ? object[name] : '';
});

Strip Scripts from a String

var newString = myString.replace(/<script[^>]*>([\s\S]*?)<\/script>/gi, function(all, code){
	scripts += code + '\n';
	return '';
});

Above are just a sampling of regular expression used by MooTools to accomplish tasks.  Most, in fact, are applied as methods to the String native so they are available with *ANY* string!

Recent Features

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

  • By
    CSS Animations Between Media Queries

    CSS animations are right up there with sliced bread. CSS animations are efficient because they can be hardware accelerated, they require no JavaScript overhead, and they are composed of very little CSS code. Quite often we add CSS transforms to elements via CSS during...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Better Pull Quotes with MooTools

    Chris Coyier authored a post titled Better Pull Quotes: Don't Repeat Markup a while back. In his post he created great-looking pull quotes without repeating any content -- instead he uses jQuery to dynamically create the pull quotes. The following is the...

  • By
    Fade Images with MooTools LazyLoad

    I recently received an email from a MooTools developer asking a great question about my LazyLoad class: "I'm using your LazyLoad MooTools plugin (which is great, by the way). I have been trying to figure out how to modify it so that once an image scrolls into...

Discussion

  1. Jeffrey

    Technologies will come and go – one library will find favor over the one you are currently using, one scripting language will arise that will make the one you are using look foolish, etc. But regular expressions are one of those things that will be a useful thing to know even on the tumultuous seas of techno-change.

    Good little article – make it a series. A cache of tested regular expressions to crib from is a useful thing to have.

    • Hear, hear!

      Perl was the first programming language I ever learned, so Regular Expressions have always been a primary tool I’ve used no matter the language. I just don’t know what I’d do without them!

      ^_^

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!