Question: I'm using an API that gives me a XML and I need to get a map from one tag which is actually a string. Example:

Having

```
Billable=7200,Overtime=false,TransportCosts=20$

```

I need

```
["Billable"="7200","Overtime=false","TransportCosts"="20$"]

```

The problem is that the string is totally dynamic, so, it can be like

```
Overtime=true,TransportCosts=one, two, three
Overtime=true,TransportCosts=1= 1,two, three,Billable=7200

```

So I can not just split by comma and then by equal sign.
Is it possible to convert a string like those to a map using a regex?

My code so far is:

```
private Map<String, String> getAttributes(String attributes) {
    final Map<String, String> attr = new HashMap<>();
    if (attributes.contains(",")) {
        final String[] pairs = attributes.split(",");
        for (String s : pairs) {
            if (s.contains("=")) {
                final String pair = s;
                final String[] keyValue = pair.split("=");
                attr.put(keyValue[0], keyValue[1]);
            }
        }
        return attr;
    }
    return attr;
}

```

Thank you in advance

Answer: 
You may use

```
(\w+)=(.*?)(?=,\w+=|$)

```

See the [regex demo](https://regex101.com/r/ZwRoCv/2/).

**Details**

* `(\w+)` - Group 1: one or more word chars
* `=` - an equal sign
* `(.*?)` - Group 2: any zero or more chars other than line break chars, as few as possible
* `(?=,\w+=|$)` - a positive lookahead that requires a `,`, then 1+ word chars, and then `=`, or end of string immediately to the right of the current location.

Java code:

```
public static Map<String, String> getAttributes(String attributes) {
    Map<String, String> attr = new HashMap<>();
    Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(\\w+)=(.*?)(?=,\\w+=|$)").matcher(attributes);
    while (m.find()) {
        attr.put(m.group(1), m.group(2));
    }
    return attr;
}

```

[Java test](https://ideone.com/Wzm0QU):

```
String s = "Overtime=true,TransportCosts=1= 1,two, three,Billable=7200";
Map<String,String> map = getAttributes(s);
for (Map.Entry entry : map.entrySet()) {
    System.out.println(entry.getKey() + "=" + entry.getValue());
}

```

Result:

```
Overtime=true
Billable=7200
TransportCosts=1= 1,two, three

```
First thing I noticed is that a delimiter is not easily identifiable with the data you're giving, but what appears to be identifiable is that a comma followed by a capital letter separates each field. 

This allows for an approach to change the delimiter to something that easily identifiable with regex using `String.replaceAll("(?<=,)([A-Z])", ",$1")`. Now you'll have a delimiter that you can identify `(,,)` and split the data to insert the quotes where needed.

Something like:

```
public class StackOverflow {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String [] data = {
                "Overtime=true,TransportCosts=one, two, three",
                "Overtime=true,TransportCosts=1= 1,two, three,Billable=7200"
        };

        for (int i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
            data[i] = data[i].replaceAll("(?<=,)([A-Z])", ",$1");
            String[] pieces = data[i].split(",,");
            for (int j = 0; j < pieces.length; j++) {
                int equalIndex = pieces[j].indexOf("=");
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(pieces[j]);
                // Insert quotes around the = sign
                sb.insert(equalIndex, "\"");
                sb.insert(equalIndex + 2, "\"");
                // Insert quotes at the beginning and end of the string
                sb.insert(0, "\"");
                sb.append("\"");
                pieces[j] = sb.toString();              
            }

            // Join the pieces back together delimited by a comma
            data[i] = String.join(",", pieces);
            System.out.println(data[i]);
        }
    }
}

```

Results

```
"Overtime"="true","TransportCosts"="one, two, three"
"Overtime"="true","TransportCosts"="1= 1,two, three","Billable"="7200"

```