In a Regular expressions I can set up an "OR" statement?

Question

HI, I'm using e-tester version 8.2..My problem is about regular expessions.
I need to catch a dynamic value from a Form Field (My-TxtBox).. this textbox gets pre populated data ( when the customer has info in the database).. this is the code:
*<input name="My-TxtBox" type="text" value="XXXX" id="ID-TxtBox"*
---- ( XXXX = dynamic number prepopulated by the web app)
So, I'm using this regular expression:
*<input name="My-TxtBox" type="text" value="(.+?)" id="ID-TxtBox"*
-----At this point, everything is fine.. but there is an exception
I'm getting a big problem when the customer doesn't have data in the server, the code is NOT like this
<input name="My-TxtBox" type="text" value="" id="ID-TxtBox"
When the customer doesn't have data in the server, the code is more like this:
*<input name="My-TxtBox" type="text" id="ID-TxtBox"*
---- (please note that there is not a value parameter now)
So, I think there is no way to create a CDV that will work for both cases? any idea to solve this?
i was thinking that maybe in the reg exps sintax you can create an "OR" statement.. my idea was to create a CDV
that works for both cases.. when there is the "value=" string and when there is not.
something like this
This CDV returns the dynamic value when there is the "value=" string =
<input name="My-TxtBox" type="text" value="(.+?)" id="ID-TxtBox"
And this CDV returns "" when there is no "value=" string = Without value:
<input name="My-TxtBox" type="text" (.*?)id="ID-TxtBox"
My idea is to place something like this in some point of the CDV = *{* value="(.+?)" *OR* (.*?) *}*
so my dream is to create a CDV similar to this:
<input name="My-TxtBox" type="text" { value="(.+?)" *OR* (.*?) }id="ID-TxtBox
I was searching on google but I simply don't get an answer....it is posible to place an OR statement into a Reg Exp and how the sintax is? ..
Regards.. I appreciate your time.

Answer 1

Hola,
You can use a regular expression such as:
<input name="My-TxtBox" type="text" ?v?a?l?u?e?=?"?(.*?)"? id="ID-TxtBox"
Note that:
* Note that there is a question mark sign (?) after each letter that may appear in the string. This means that the letter may or may not appear.
* Note that instead of using (.+?) you should use (.*?).
This means that will match any character that appears zero or mutliple times. The question mark here means that is non-greedy, meaning that it will not include in the .* matching anything like the rest of the pattern (in this case the rest of the pattern is "? id="ID-TxtBox").
* Note that the question mark in front of the v of value is there to match a space that may or may not exists.
Few other facts:
* In regular expressions the parenthesys determine sequence of operations and mark groups. Such groups can be referenced in code (not in etester but in general). In eTester it will always get the value of the first group (first group = first set of parenthesys).
* ORs in regular expressions can be expressed with the pipe "|" (without the quotes), but you will need parenthesys in this case which would not allow you to capture the group of characters that you want.
Regards,
[Z]{1}uriel C?
Edited by: Zuriel on Oct 5, 2009 3:07 PM
Edited to avoid having the text changed by the forum formatting options.