Filter certain text out of string

Question

For a project I set myself I have to filter a 10 character string out of a URL.

For example:

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/SOMETEXTHERE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I want to filter out the SOMETEXTHERE . But this characters are changing so I can't just say that it is always the same.

Are there any existing functions or so?

Answer 1

You can use regex for this task:

final String string = "https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B001VGASYA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1";
final String replacement = String.format("$1%s$3", "REPLACED");
final String result = string.replaceFirst("(.*product\\/)([^\\/]+)(.*)", replacement); // or .replaceAll()
System.out.println(result);

Breakdown:

(.*product\\\\/)([^\\\\/]+)(.*)

• 1st Capturing Group (.*product\\\\/)
  • .* matches any character (except for line terminators)
  • * Quantifier — Matches between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy) product matches the characters product literally (case sensitive)
  • \\/ matches the character / literally (case sensitive)
• 2nd Capturing Group ([^\\\\/]+)
  • Match a single character not present in the list below [^\\/]+
  • + Quantifier — Matches between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
  • \\/ matches the character / literally (case sensitive)
• 3rd Capturing Group (.*)
  • .* matches any character (except for line terminators)
  • * Quantifier — Matches between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)

Answer 2

If are you sure that only the text that you mentioned will change you can split the string by "/" character then just take the right string from list.

String URL = "https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B001VGASYA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1";
    String targetString = Arrays.asList(URL.split("/")).get(5);