datasette-rure

Datasette plugin that adds a custom SQL function for executing matches using the Rust regular expression engine

Install this plugin in the same environment as Datasette to enable the regexp() SQL function.

$ pip install datasette-rure

The plugin is built on top of the rure-python library by David Blewett.

regexp() to test regular expressions

You can test if a value matches a regular expression like this:

select regexp('hi.*there', 'hi there')
-- returns 1
select regexp('not.*there', 'hi there')
-- returns 0

You can also use SQLite's custom syntax to run matches:

select 'hi there' REGEXP 'hi.*there'
-- returns 1

This means you can select rows based on regular expression matches - for example, to select every article where the title begins with an E or an F:

select * from articles where title REGEXP '^[EF]'

Try this out: REGEXP interactive demo

regexp_match() to extract groups

You can extract captured subsets of a pattern using regexp_match().

select regexp_match('.*( and .*)', title) as n from articles where n is not null
-- Returns the ' and X' component of any matching titles, e.g.
--     and Recognition
--     and Transitions Their Place
-- etc

This will return the first parenthesis match when called with two arguments. You can call it with three arguments to indicate which match you would like to extract:

select regexp_match('.*(and)(.*)', title, 2) as n from articles where n is not null

The function will return null for invalid inputs e.g. a pattern without capture groups.

Try this out: regexp_match() interactive demo

regexp_matches() to extract multiple matches at once

The regexp_matches() function can be used to extract multiple patterns from a single string. The result is returned as a JSON array, which can then be further processed using SQLite's JSON functions.

The first argument is a regular expression with named capture groups. The second argument is the string to be matched.

select regexp_matches(
    'hello (?P<name>\w+) the (?P<species>\w+)',
    'hello bob the dog, hello maggie the cat, hello tarquin the otter'
)

This will return a list of JSON objects, each one representing the named captures from the original regular expression:

[
    {"name": "bob", "species": "dog"},
    {"name": "maggie", "species": "cat"},
    {"name": "tarquin", "species": "otter"}
]

Try this out: regexp_matches() interactive demo