Java regex inside brackets

Question

I need to get the following information from an xml file:

    "abridged_cast": [
      {
        "name": "Tom Hanks",
        "characters": ["Woody"]
      },
      {
        "name": "Tim Allen",
        "characters": ["Buzz Lightyear"]
      },
      {
        "name": "Joan Cusack",
        "characters": ["Jessie the Cowgirl"]
      },
      {
        "name": "Don Rickles",
        "characters": ["Mr. Potato Head"]
      },
      {
        "name": "Wallace Shawn",
        "characters": ["Rex"]
      }
    ],

So far I have been able to cut it to:

    "abridged_cast": [
     {
        "name": "Tom Hanks",
        "characters": ["Woody"]

The above is obtained using this regex:

\"abridged_cast\": \\[([^]]+)\\]

I need the regex to extend to the bottom ], but I can't seem to get it to work. I have tried a huge number of variations with no luck.

Answer 1

This is a bit of a train wreck, but:

"abridged_cast": \[(\s*\{\s*"name": "[a-zA-Z .]+",\s*"characters": \[("[a-zA-Z .]+", )*"[a-zA-Z .]+"\]\s*\}(,(?=\s*\{)|\s))*\s*\],?

See demo .

Since the "characters" field is an array, I've allowed for multiple terms there, an example of which I included in the demo.

Note that I have just shown the raw regex; to use it in java you'll have to escape the quotes and backslashes (which I didn't have the stomach for).

Answer 2

If you have complete and valid JSON, you can parse it with Jackson or GSON.

This is data classes:

public static class Role {
    private String name;
    private List<String> characters;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public List<String> getCharacters() {
        return characters;
    }

    public void setCharacters(List<String> characters) {
        this.characters = characters;
    }
}

public static class Cast {
    @JsonProperty("abridged_cast")
    private List<Role> roles;

    public List<Role> getRoles() {
        return roles;
    }

    public void setRoles(List<Role> roles) {
        this.roles = roles;
    }
}

And this is how you can parse it:

ObjectMapper om = new ObjectMapper();
Cast cast = om.readValue(s, Cast.class);

where s is your JSON.