finding specific text in textarea

Getting Started
1

Hi,

i’m back to Xojo after a few years… so sorry for my basic questions:

How can i find a specific text within a textarea and maybe get the next few characters after this string:

iamastring: iamanotherstring (there are a lot more characters in the textarea)

How do i get iamanotherstring? I have to find iamastring first, because this is a known string, iamanotherstring is dynamic, so i cannot search directly for it.

Michael

2

InStr? RegEx?

x=Instr(myTextArea.text,"WhatToLookFor")

use SelStart and SelLength if you want to highlight the found text

3

thanks, will try this.

4

InStr makes an integer from a string, or? Makes this sense?

Where do i find SelStart and SelLenght?

I’m on Windows.

5

SelStart and SelLength are available only in controls taking some text content.

If you want to analyze a string outside that scope, you will need to restrict to Left, Mid, Right… but they are really efficient too.

6

try the Language Ref documents, it is all explained there…

them come back if you don’t understand

The OP specified TEXTAREA

7

There are soooo many ways to do it. I want to show another way of doing it with RegEx.

Create a Module and Paste the following Text into Xojo while you have selected the Module in the Navigator:

[code]Public Function GetWordAfter(Extends s As String, WordBeforeTheWord As String) as String
Dim rx As New RegEx
rx.SearchPattern = “(?Umi-s)” + WordBeforeTheWord + “(.+)\s”

Dim rxOptions As RegExOptions = rx.Options
rxOptions.LineEndType = 4

Dim match As RegExMatch = rx.Search( s)

If match <> Nil Then

If match.SubExpressionCount > 0 Then
  
  Return match.SubExpressionString(1) // Add .Trimm if you want to strip the spaces before and after the found word
  
End If

End If

End Function
[/code]

This will extends any String with a new Method called “GetWordAfter”. This Method needs the Word to look for and delivers back the word after this word. So you can examine any String and look for a String after a String :smiley:

Like this MsgBox Me.Text.GetWordAfter("iamastring")

But be carefull. I t may fail if you have special chars in your search.

BTW: The Code has been made with the help of RegExRX (macOS)

8

[quote=441167:@Dave S]try the Language Ref documents, it is all explained there…

them come back if you don’t understand

The OP specified TEXTAREA[/quote]

got it:

[code]dim findFirst As integer = InStr(TextArea_cURLOutput.Text, “datacenters/”)

TextArea_cURLOutput.SelStart = findFirst + 11
TextArea_cURLOutput.SelLength = 36
txt_DatacenterID.Text = TextArea_cURLOutput.SelText[/code]

thanks
Michael