Python Regex replace multiple occurencies of parts of a string

Question

I have a chunk of HTML that contains multiple <img> tags. The current format of the tag is:

<img width="580" height="183" src="/images/stories/acidalkalinetable.jpg" alt="acid alkaline table" title="Body pH Balance">

I want to go through the html and for each <img> tag change the format to:

<img width="580" height="183" src="{{media url="wysiwyg/acidalkalinetable.jpg"}}" alt="acid alkaline table" title="Body pH Balance">

You can see it's the src that's changing. I've kept the filename but changed other parts of the src

If the img was a single string I could do something like:

content = '<img width="580" height="183" src="/images/stories/acidalkalinetable.jpg" alt="acid alkaline table" title="Body pH Balance">'

filename = re.search(r'/images/stories/\w+\.(jpg|png|gif)', content)

new_content = re.sub(r'/images/stories/\w+\.(jpg|png|gif)', '{{media url="wysiwyg/' + filename + '"}}', content)

(I haven't tested that)

But I'm not sure how I can do that for each occurrence of the <img> tag in HTML

Are you sure about the quoting? "{{media url="wysiwyg/acidalkalinetable.jpg"}}", the wsiwyg part is outside the quote. — nhahtdh
– nhahtdh, Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 17:33
Yeah, I'm cleaning up the data to import into Magento. That's how it does it's image tags — iamjonesy
– iamjonesy, Commented Mar 19, 2013 at 17:35

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-20 10:04:08Z

2

You need to capture the filename as a group, you can then replace it in one go:

re.sub(r'/images/stories/([\w%]+\.(?:jpg|png|gif))', r'{{media url="wysiwyg/\1"}}', content)

This puts a capturing group ((...)) around the whole filename including the extension (itself now using a non-capturing (?:...) group instead), resulting in:

>>> re.sub(r'/images/stories/([\w%]+\.(?:jpg|png|gif))', r'{{media url="wysiwyg/\1"}}', content)
'<img width="580" height="183" src="{{media url="wysiwyg/acidalkalinetable.jpg"}}" alt="acid alkaline table" title="Body pH Balance">'

This uses \1 as a replacement pattern, see the re.sub() documentation.

This re.sub() call will replace all matching /images/stories/.. paths with the {{media url="wisywig/.."}} syntax.

edited Mar 20, 2013 at 10:04

answered Mar 19, 2013 at 17:30

Martijn Pieters

1.1m326 gold badges4.2k silver badges3.4k bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

iamjonesy Over a year ago

Thanks for the answer. Would you be able to update the regex so that is can handle possible spaces in filename ie something%20something.jpg

Martijn Pieters Over a year ago

@iamjonesy: done; all you needed to do was extend the \w to a characterclass that adds % as an option.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Python Regex replace multiple occurencies of parts of a string

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest