Extract link from href in Swift

Question

Suppose I have a html link like this:

<a href = "https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport/koshien/" target="_blank"> https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport / koshien / </a>

I want to extract:

<a href = "THIS LINK" target="_blank"> NOT THIS LINK </a> 

I tried: someString.replacingOccurrences(of: "<[^>]+>", with: "", options: .regularExpression, range: nil) but that gives me:

<a href = "NOT THIS LINK" target="_blank"> BUT THIS LINK </a>

Please help.

Answer 1

No need for a regular expression, you could use the link property of an attributed string.

First, let's use this extension:

extension String{
    func convert2Html() -> NSAttributedString {

        guard let data = data(using: .utf8) else { return NSAttributedString() }

        do {
            let htmlAttrib = NSAttributedString.DocumentType.html
            return try NSAttributedString(data: data,
                                          options: [.documentType : htmlAttrib],
                                          documentAttributes: nil)
        } catch {
            return NSAttributedString()
        }
    }
}

to convert this String:

let html = "<a href = "https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport/koshien/" target="_blank"> https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport / koshien / </a>"

to an NSAttributedString:

let attrib = html.convert2Html()

And then extract the link this way :

let link = attrib.attribute(.link, at: 0, effectiveRange: nil)

if let url = link as? NSURL, let href = url.absoluteString {
    print(href)  //https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport/koshien/
}