regular_expressions

Extract single string

Suppose you want to match the following portion of a web-page:

name="file" value="readme.txt" and you want to extract readme.txt.

A suitable reqular expression would be:

name="file" value="(.+?)"

The special characters above are:

• ( and ) - these enclose the portion of the match string to be returned
• . - match any character. + - one or more times. ? - don't be greedy, i.e. stop when first match succeeds

Note: without the ?, the .+ would continue past the first " until it found the last possible " - probably not what was intended.

Extract multiple strings

Suppose you want to match the following portion of a web-page: name="file.name" value="readme.txt" and you want to extract file.name and readme.txt.

A suitable reqular expression would be:

name="(.+?)" value="(.+?)"

This would create 2 groups, which could be used in the JMeter Regular Expression Extractor template as $1$ and $2$.

The JMeter Regex Extractor saves the values of the groups in additional variables.

For example, assume:

• Reference Name: MYREF
• Regex: name="(.+?)" value="(.+?)"
• Template: $1$$2$