Extracting Tokens from a String Template (Python)

Python provides regular-expression-based baked-in string-templating functionality. It’s highly configurable and allows you to easily do string-replacements into templates of the following manner:

Token 1: $Token1
Token 2: $Token2
Token 3: ${Token3}

You can tell it to use an alternate template pattern (using an alternate symbol or symbols) as well as being able to tell it to work differently at the regular-expression level.

It’s not spelled-out how to extract the tokens from a template, however. You would just use a simple regular-expression-based search:

import string
import re

text = """
Token 1: $Token1
Token 2: $Token2
Token 3: $Token3
"""

t = string.Template(text)
result = re.findall(t.pattern, t.template)
tokens = [r[1] for r in result]
print(tokens)
#['Token1', 'Token2', 'Token3']
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