What is StringUtils.substringBetween in Java?

Overview

substringBetween() is a staticthe methods in Java that can be called without creating an object of the class. method of the StringUtils used to return the substring that is nested between the open and close strings/tags. This method returns only the first matched substring.

How to import StringUtils

The definition of StringUtils can be found in the Apache Commons Lang package, which we can add to the Maven project by adding the following dependency to the pom.xml file:

<dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.12.0</version>
</dependency>

Note: For other versions of the commons-lang package, refer to the Maven Repository.

We can import the StringUtils class as follows:

import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;

Syntax

public static String substringBetween(final String str, final String open, final String close)

Parameters

  • str: The string from which a substring is to be retrieved.
  • open: The string before str.
  • close: The string after str.

Return value

This method returns the substring between open and close.

Code

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>test</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <properties>
        <maven.compiler.source>8</maven.compiler.source>
        <maven.compiler.target>8</maven.compiler.target>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.12.0</version>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.1</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>package</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>shade</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                            <transformers>
                                <transformer
                                        implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
                                    <mainClass>Main</mainClass>
                                </transformer>
                            </transformers>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

Explanation

The maven dependency for StringUtils is included in the pom.xml file:

Main.java

  • Line 1: We import the StringUtils class.
  • Line 6: We define the text or the string called text.
  • Line 7: We define the starting string, open.
  • Line 8: We define the closing string, close.
  • Line 9: We retrieve the substring between open and close by invoking the substringBetween() method.

In the output, though there are multiple matches for the substring between open and close, only the first match is returned.

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