Create NCX file with Notepad ++ and regex
I have an HTML content page containing a list of hyperlinked book sections:
<a href="final/main.html">Multimedia Implementation</a><br/>
<a href="final/toc.html">Table of Contents</a><br/>
<a href="final/pref01.html">About the Author</a><br/>
<a href="final/pref02.html">About the Technical Reviewers</a><br/>
<a href="final/pref03.html">Acknowledgments</a><br/>
<a href="final/part01.html">Part I: Introduction and Overview</a><br/>
<a href="final/ch01.html">Chapter 1. Technical Overview</a><br/>
...
I want to create an NCX file for a Kindle book that should contain the following data:
<navPoint id="n1" playOrder="1">
<navLabel>
<text>Multimedia Implementation</text>
</navLabel>
<content src="final/main.html"/>
</navPoint>
<navPoint id="n2" playOrder="2">
<navLabel>
<text>Table of Contents</text>
</navLabel>
<content src="final/toc.html"/>
</navPoint>
<navPoint id="n3" playOrder="3">
<navLabel>
<text>About the Author</text>
</navLabel>
<content src="final/pref01.html"/>
</navPoint>
...
I am using Notepad ++: is it possible to automate this process with regex?
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You can't do everything with regex .. you can split the problem in two.
- generate type strings
<navPoint id="n1" playOrder="1">
using program logic (increment variable) - The rest you can do with regex
Use the following regex to match:
<a\shref="([^"]*)">([^<]*)<\/a><br\/>
And replace with:
(generated string)<navLabel>\n<text>\2</text>\n<content src="\1"/>\n</navPoint>
See DEMO
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Yes, it is possible to replace links with tags <navpoint>
. The only thing I haven't found a solution to is incremental attribute numbering <navpoint>
id
and playOrder
...
The following regex will do most of the work:
/^<a[^>]*href="([^"]+)"[^>]*([^<]+).*$/gm
replaced by:
<navpoint id="n" playOrder="">\n<navLabel><text>$2</text></navLabel>\n<content src="$1" />\n</navpoint>\n
Regular Expression Details
/^<a .. only parse lines that start with an `<a` tag
.*href=" .. find the first occurance of `href="`
([^"]+) .. capture the text and stop when a " is found
"[^>]*> .. find the end of the <a> tag
([^<]+) .. capture the text and stop when a < is found (i.e. the </a> tag)
.*$/ .. continue to end of the line
gm .. search the whole string and parse each line individually
A more detailed (but even more confusing) explanation is here: https://regex101.com/r/gA0yJ2/1 This link also shows how regex works. You can test the changes there if you like
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