When I run this code, the first capture group gives me electronics?sort=desc but I only want to get electronics without the query parameter part. Right now result[1] returns the whole thing including the question mark and everything after it. How can I modify my regex or approach to capture just the path segment before the query string? I’ve tried different patterns but keep getting the same issue where the optional query part gets included in my main capture group.
Your negated character class doesn’t know when to stop. [^\/]+ keeps eating characters until it hits a slash, but there’s no slash after electronics, so it grabs the query string too.
Honestly, manual URL parsing gets old fast. I used to write regex patterns for every URL format at work until I realized I was doing the same parsing logic repeatedly.
Now I automate the whole URL processing pipeline. Workflows handle URL validation, segment extraction, parameter parsing, and route data wherever it needs to go. No more custom regex for each URL pattern.
You could build a flow that takes any product URL, extracts the category, validates it against your product database, and triggers different actions based on category type. Way more scalable than hardcoded patterns.
When your URL structure changes, just update the workflow instead of hunting down regex patterns scattered across your codebase.
Your regex is matching too much. [^\/]+ grabs everything except slashes, so when there’s no slash after “electronics”, it keeps going and catches the query string too.
I threw ? and & into the negated character class since query params can have multiple parts split by ampersands. Now it stops at the first query character.
Or you could be more specific about what counts as a category name:
const pattern = /products\/category\/(\w+)/;
\w+ only matches word characters, so it automatically skips punctuation like question marks. Perfect if your categories stick to alphanumeric.
Your regex is being too greedy. The [^\/]+ part grabs everything until it hits a slash, but there’s no slash after electronics - so it keeps going and captures the query string too.
I added ? to the character class [^\/?]+ so it stops at either a slash OR a question mark.
Honestly though, regex gets messy fast with complex URLs. I deal with this daily and always automate URL processing workflows instead of writing regex every time.
I set up automation that handles URL parsing, validation, and data extraction all in one go. You can build workflows that parse URLs, extract segments, transform data, and route it wherever needed.
For product category extraction, you could automate the whole thing - parse URLs, extract categories, maybe trigger actions based on category type.
Or just split on the question mark since you know the structure: const category = url.split('category/')[1].split('?')[0]; grabs ‘electronics’ directly - no regex headaches.
Your regex pattern [^\/]+ is grabbing everything except forward slashes, so it’s pulling in the query string too since there’s no slash to stop it. Skip the regex headache and use JavaScript’s URL parsing instead: javascript const url = "products/category/electronics?sort=desc"; const urlObj = new URL(`http://dummy.com/${url}`); const pathSegments = urlObj.pathname.split('/'); const category = pathSegments[pathSegments.length - 1]; // "electronics" Way more reliable for complex URLs and handles edge cases that’ll break regex. I’ve debugged enough regex patterns to know that native URL methods save tons of time when you’re dealing with different URL formats in production.