Today, I have successfully made my first contribution to a Sun Open Source Community, specifically, Netbeans!, and my first submission to Sun Microsystem's Code For Freedom Contest.

My contribution is an an easy to use all-in-one regular expressions plugin (builder, tester, organizer) for the Netbeans IDE.

Flashback

I had initially sought to develop this tool as there weren't such a feature in  Netbeans. I had checked out the Netbeans Plugins portal  and Netbeans contrib project and found out  two plugins which dealt with regular expressions  but supported only some aspects of what I had in mind. A much more powerful tool could be developed. I  had discussed the idea on the nbdev@netbeans.org mailing list and received enthusiastic response for the development of such a plugin and suggestions for features it should have. Thus, I started off with this plugin and tried to incorporate as many of the features they suggested as possible.

A little background on Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are a way to describe a set of strings based on common characteristics shared by each string in the set. They can be used to search, edit, or manipulate text and data. You must learn a specific syntax to create regular expressions — one that goes beyond the normal syntax of the Java programming language. Regular expressions vary in complexity, but once you understand the basics of how they're constructed, you'll be able to decipher (or create) any regular expression.

There is a lesson available on Sun's website which explains how to use the java.util.regex API for pattern matching with regular expressions. This lesson starts with the basics, and gradually builds to cover more advanced techniques.

There's a good tutorial on learning regular expressions available here.

My Plugin: Regular Expressions Plugin (RegExPlugin 0.1)

What is it?
A simple and easy to use all-in-one solution which helps a developer in all aspects of working with regular expressions - Learning, Building, Testing and Organizing.

What all does it do?

• Building
  • Building a regular expression is as easy as browsing the built-in regular expressions language reference, double clicking on the language elements to insert them into your regular expression.
  • Paste your regular expression from Java Code, convert it into a regular expression (all \\’s to \’s converted automatically), modify and/or test it, then automatically convert it back to a java string.
• Testing
  • Uses java.util.regex API for robust regular expressions matching
  • Syntax Validation
  • Matches the regex against an input text and shows match results in the form of a tree, with matches at the first level with their matched groups at the second level.
  • Match results show individual groups matched with exact position and sub-sequence.
  • Clicking on a match highlights the sub-sequence in the input text window.
  • All regular expressions compilation options supported – Multiline, Dotall mode, etc.
• Complete Regular Expressions Language Reference
  • No need to leave Netbeans to refer language reference for regular expressions
  • Divided into intuitive categories- Characters, Character Classes, Grouping Constructs, Substitutions, various types of Quantifiers, etc.
  • All the language constructs described in java.util.regex.Pattern javadoc are included.
  • Click on a language element to see it’s description in the pane below.
  • Very helpful for newbie’s and learners. Gets you up to speed quickly.

Download: At Netbeans Plugin Portal

Usage: To open the regular expressions plugin window, go to Tools > Regular Expressions Plugin.

Demo Video: I've made a small video showcasing the features of the plugin by showing how to build and test a regular expression for checking email addresses:

Do check out the plugin and point out any bugs / suggestions / any valuable input you can give for it's improvement.