How To Extract HTML Links With Regular Expression

In this tutorial, we will show you how to extract hyperlink from a HTML page. For example, to get the link from following content :

this is text1 <a href='mkyong.com' target='_blank'>hello</a> this is text2...

1. First get the “value” from a tag – Result : a href='mkyong.com' target='_blank'
2. Later get the “link” from above extracted value – Result : mkyong.com

1. Regular Expression Pattern

Extract A tag Regular Expression Pattern

(?i)<a([^>]+)>(.+?)</a>

Extract Link From A tag Regular Expression Pattern

\s*(?i)href\s*=\s*(\"([^"]*\")|'[^']*'|([^'">\s]+));

Description

(		#start of group #1
 ?i		#  all checking are case insensive
)		#end of group #1
<a              #start with "<a"
  (		#  start of group #2
    [^>]+	#     anything except (">"), at least one character
   )		#  end of group #2
  >		#     follow by ">"
    (.+?)	#	match anything 
         </a>	#	  end with "</a>

\s*			   #can start with whitespace
  (?i)			   # all checking are case insensive
     href		   #  follow by "href" word
        \s*=\s*		   #   allows spaces on either side of the equal sign,
              (		   #    start of group #1
               "([^"]*")   #      allow string with double quotes enclosed - "string"
               |	   #	  ..or
               '[^']*'	   #        allow string with single quotes enclosed - 'string'
               |           #	  ..or
               ([^'">]+)   #      can't contains one single quotes, double quotes ">"
	      )		   #    end of group #1

2. Java Link Extractor Example

Here’s a simple Java Link extractor example, to extract the a tag value from 1st pattern, and use 2nd pattern to extract the link from 1st pattern.

HTMLLinkExtractor.java

package com.mkyong.crawler.core;
 
import java.util.Vector;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
 
public class HTMLLinkExtractor {
 
	private Pattern patternTag, patternLink;
	private Matcher matcherTag, matcherLink;
 
	private static final String HTML_A_TAG_PATTERN = "(?i)<a([^>]+)>(.+?)</a>";
	private static final String HTML_A_HREF_TAG_PATTERN = 
		"\\s*(?i)href\\s*=\\s*(\"([^\"]*\")|'[^']*'|([^'\">\\s]+))";
 
 
	public HTMLLinkExtractor() {
		patternTag = Pattern.compile(HTML_A_TAG_PATTERN);
		patternLink = Pattern.compile(HTML_A_HREF_TAG_PATTERN);
	}
 
	/**
	 * Validate html with regular expression
	 * 
	 * @param html
	 *            html content for validation
	 * @return Vector links and link text
	 */
	public Vector<HtmlLink> grabHTMLLinks(final String html) {
 
		Vector<HtmlLink> result = new Vector<HtmlLink>();
 
		matcherTag = patternTag.matcher(html);
 
		while (matcherTag.find()) {
 
			String href = matcherTag.group(1); // href
			String linkText = matcherTag.group(2); // link text
 
			matcherLink = patternLink.matcher(href);
 
			while (matcherLink.find()) {
 
				String link = matcherLink.group(1); // link
				HtmlLink obj = new HtmlLink();
				obj.setLink(link);
				obj.setLinkText(linkText);
 
				result.add(obj);
 
			}
 
		}
 
		return result;
 
	}
 
	class HtmlLink {
 
		String link;
		String linkText;
 
		HtmlLink(){};
 
		@Override
		public String toString() {
			return new StringBuffer("Link : ").append(this.link)
			.append(" Link Text : ").append(this.linkText).toString();
		}
 
		public String getLink() {
			return link;
		}
 
		public void setLink(String link) {
			this.link = replaceInvalidChar(link);
		}
 
		public String getLinkText() {
			return linkText;
		}
 
		public void setLinkText(String linkText) {
			this.linkText = linkText;
		}
 
		private String replaceInvalidChar(String link){
			link = link.replaceAll("'", "");
			link = link.replaceAll("\"", "");
			return link;
		}
 
	}
}

3. Unit Test

Unit test with TestNG. Simulate the HTML content via @DataProvider.

TestHTMLLinkExtractor.java

package com.mkyong.crawler.core;
 
import java.util.Vector;
 
import org.testng.Assert;
import org.testng.annotations.BeforeClass;
import org.testng.annotations.DataProvider;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;
 
import com.mkyong.crawler.core.HTMLLinkExtractor.HtmlLink;
 
/**
 * HTML link extrator Testing
 * 
 * @author mkyong
 * 
 */
public class TestHTMLLinkExtractor {
 
	private HTMLLinkExtractor htmlLinkExtractor;
	String TEST_LINK = "http://www.google.com";
 
	@BeforeClass
	public void initData() {
		htmlLinkExtractor = new HTMLLinkExtractor();
	}
 
	@DataProvider
	public Object[][] HTMLContentProvider() {
	  return new Object[][] {
	    new Object[] { "abc hahaha <a href='" + TEST_LINK + "'>google</a>" },
	    new Object[] { "abc hahaha <a HREF='" + TEST_LINK + "'>google</a>" },
 
	    new Object[] { "abc hahaha <A HREF='" + TEST_LINK + "'>google</A> , "
		+ "abc hahaha <A HREF='" + TEST_LINK + "' target='_blank'>google</A>" },
 
	    new Object[] { "abc hahaha <A HREF='" + TEST_LINK + "' target='_blank'>google</A>" },
	    new Object[] { "abc hahaha <A target='_blank' HREF='" + TEST_LINK + "'>google</A>" },
	    new Object[] { "abc hahaha <A target='_blank' HREF=\"" + TEST_LINK + "\">google</A>" },
	    new Object[] { "abc hahaha <a HREF=" + TEST_LINK + ">google</a>" }, };
	}
 
	@Test(dataProvider = "HTMLContentProvider")
	public void ValidHTMLLinkTest(String html) {
 
		Vector<HtmlLink> links = htmlLinkExtractor.grabHTMLLinks(html);
 
		//there must have something
		Assert.assertTrue(links.size() != 0);
 
		for (int i = 0; i < links.size(); i++) {
			HtmlLink htmlLinks = links.get(i);
			//System.out.println(htmlLinks);
			Assert.assertEquals(htmlLinks.getLink(), TEST_LINK);
		}
 
	}
}

Result

[TestNG] Running:
  /private/var/folders/w8/jxyz5pf51lz7nmqm_hv5z5br0000gn/T/testng-eclipse--530204890/testng-customsuite.xml
 
PASSED: ValidHTMLLinkTest("abc hahaha <a href='http://www.google.com'>google</a>")
PASSED: ValidHTMLLinkTest("abc hahaha <a HREF='http://www.google.com'>google</a>")
PASSED: ValidHTMLLinkTest("abc hahaha <A HREF='http://www.google.com'>google</A> , abc hahaha <A HREF='http://www.google.com' target='_blank'>google</A>")
PASSED: ValidHTMLLinkTest("abc hahaha <A HREF='http://www.google.com' target='_blank'>google</A>")
PASSED: ValidHTMLLinkTest("abc hahaha <A target='_blank' HREF='http://www.google.com'>google</A>")
PASSED: ValidHTMLLinkTest("abc hahaha <A target='_blank' HREF="http://www.google.com">google</A>")
PASSED: ValidHTMLLinkTest("abc hahaha <a HREF=http://www.google.com>google</a>")