PeopleSoft Regular Expressions

[[Regular Expressions]] can be used in [[PeopleSoft]] [[PeopleCode]] by using PeopleCode support for Java. The following does a text replacement:

<pre>
Local JavaObject &text;
Local JavaObject &expression;
Local JavaObject &converter;

&text = CreateJavaObject("java.lang.String","Text to be changed");

&expression = GetJavaClass("java.util.regex.Pattern").compile("[Tt]ext");
&converter = &expression.matcher(&text);

&text = &converter.ReplaceAll("Replacement");
</pre>

'''CreateJavaObject''' - creates the Java String object with the text to feed to the Regular Expression then referred to by &text.

'''GetJavaClass''' - refers to the Pattern Java class statically so that it can run the compile method.

This trick can be used with any Java class you want to use in PeopleCode.

==Uses of Regular Expressions in PeopleCode==

===Checking the Format===
The Custom Field Formatting of PeopleSoft is great for certain types of format checking and changing. It is ideal for reformatting phone numbers for example.

Regular Expressions however provide a large number of additional possibilities that will allow sophisticated checks to be made with a very small amount of code.

===Text Processing===
[[Regular Expressions]] also allow text processing that would take many Find, Substitute, Replace and SubString commands.

==More information on Regular Expressions==

Regular expression calculator:  [http://www.homemarketeer.com/sbs/regular_expression.html Regular Expression Calculator]

Regular expression information: [http://www.homemarketeer.com/sbs/regexp.htm Regular Expression Information]