Sanibel Logic has a number of products which utilize Regular Expressions.  One common question asked by licensees is how to encode Regular Expression strings within the web.config file.  Because the web.config conforms to rules for HTML encoding, any such string must first be HTML encoded, as provided by the .NET System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode method.  After the string is HTML encoded then we must consider Regular Expression special characters, which must be escaped and include the following special characters:

• "\" - Backslash
• "^" - Carat
• "." - Period
• "[" - Left bracket
• "$" - Dollar sign
• "(" - Left parenthesis
• ")" - Right parenthesis
• "|" - Pipe
• "*" - Asterisk
• "+" - Plus
• "?" - Question mark
• "{" - Left curly bracket

SSLRedirect uses Regular Expression values within the web.config SSLRedirect configuration section, within the urlsIn and urlsOut Xml tags.

HttpCompressionAgent also uses Regular Expression values within its web.config HttpCompression configuration section, within the mimeTypes, urls, assemblies and urlReferrers Xml tags.

To shortcut the process of browsing the Internet, so one can determine how to HTML encode and properly allow for Regular Expression special characters, I have written a basic web transaction which will transform an input Regular Expression string.   Click HERE to try the Regular Expression transformation web transaction.

Sample output from the Regular Expression Transformation web transaction is included for your benefit below...