# RegEx for Selecting an Attribute and its Value

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/regex-for-selecting-an-attribute-and-its-value/641655>\
**Category:** programming\
**Created:** [January 23, 2020, 5:42am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/regex-for-selecting-an-attribute-and-its-value/641655 "2020-01-23T05:42:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kirupa](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/kirupa/32/11616_2.png) [@kirupa](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/kirupa)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 5:42am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/regex-for-selecting-an-attribute-and-its-value/641655/1 "2020-01-23T05:42:13Z")

</div>

Because I rely a lot on HTML code generators, I often end up in some weird situations where some attribute and value gets thrown into the markup. Here is an example:

```
<span data-sheets-value="{'1':2,'2':'Get your feet wet working with CSS animations by learning about the animation property, @keyframes rule, and more!'}">Hello!</span>

```

The **data-sheets-value** attribute and its JSON value were automatically inserted by Google Sheets when I pasted some content from it into my page. On a typical page, I may end up with hundreds of these, and each attribute instance might have their own unique value. A traditional find/replace won’t work because of the varying content. I have to rely on regular expressions. Sigh.

This particular scenario is one I run into all the time, so I figured I’d share the expression I use to find both the attribute and the value. For the **data-sheets-value** attribute, the expression is: **`data-sheets-value="(.[^"]+)"`** For something like class, the expression will be: **`class="(.[^"]+)"`**

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/2X/5/56652d854dc2e393d9a7139ea478132c5dc0bd0a.png)

Replace **data-sheets-value** or **class** with whatever attribute name you are looking out for. This expression will find it and whatever value exists within quotation marks afterwards. It’s a great way to clean-up your HTML if you find yourself with a bunch of attributes and values that you need to bulk replace or just get rid off.

🤓