Strings make me cry :(

Anon

Hi,
I am interested in doing something like the following. My php script looks through an HTML file on my server. It looks for all the urls (below is an example)

It will then grab the 7 letters after text and put them in a file line by line. So the file looks like.

ERTRDYU
BDGFDYU
SEWRSYU
etc...

I can find and replace but i dont know the command to find "text=" then count over 7 characters and grab them.

If somone can help me i would appreciate it.

Thanks,
KC

Anon

well, I don't know if this is the BEST way (my way rarely is the best way), but it should work:

$link="<A href=mydomain.com/fire.php?text=ERTRDYU>";
list($waste, $text)=explode("text=",$link);
echo $text; // prints "ERTRDYU"

Anon

If you're pulling links from a website you need to use PCRE's (regular expressions) to find the link first (think that's what you're looking for anyway). You can use the following resource on my site to try out a regular expression that ALWAYS pulls a link accurately (regardless of whitespace, tabs, single or double or NO quotes, etc.):

http://www.samuelfullman.com/team/php/tools/regular_expression_tester_p.php

Once you reliably get the link(s) in a variable(array), you can then explode the string by test= as Craig said. Be ready for Test and TEST though :-)

Anon

A bit more...

I am not pulling the html file from another page, its right on my server, but when i do an explode and i have multiple links its not working. The first instance comes up but the second instance doesnt. I have tried echo $text[1] but the others arent being pulled.

Any help is appreciated,
KC

Anon

while (you are looping through all your urls) {

$link="<A href=mydomain.com/fire.php?text=ERTRDYU>";
list($waste, $text)=explode("text=",$link);
$text_collection[]=$text;
echo $text; // prints "ERTRDYU"
}

print_r($text_collection);
// should print all your "texts" as an array

warning- untested

Anon

I'm sorry im fairly new to all of this. I dont quite get, "you are looping through all your urls". I tried while $text_collction != "" but that doesnt do it. I'm not sure how you set this up. Sorry,
KC

Anon

can you please post an example file here.. i am sure someone can make a script that will help you.. or a block of code.

Anon

What I meant was looping through the array of urls. something like

while (list($key, $val)=each($link)) {

or something to that effect. Why don't you post what you have so I can be more specific.

Anon

My Code -->
Because i dont quite understand the working of your code I am not sure if this is put together correctly. For obvious reasons it doesnt work but if i can get some help i would appreciate it. What it should do is open index.html and export the next 7 characters after text= in the document (all of which fall in a <A href> tag). It will then put them in an array and then save them to the exportFile.

<?
$importFile = "index.html";
$keyWord = "text=";
$exportFile = "ModID's

$fcontents = join ( '', file ( $importFile));

while (I DONT KNOW WHAT GOES HERE) {

list($waste, $text)=explode("text=",$fcontents);
$text_collection[]=$text;
echo $text; // prints "ERTRDYU"
}

print_r($text_collection);
// should print all your "texts" as an array
}

/ Now that the array is made write these to a file line by line /
$fp = fopen ($exportFile, 'w');
while ($text != ""){ //While there is something in the array.
fwrite($fp, text[$n]);
$n++
}
fclose($fp);

echo ("Variable list was exported to, $exportFile");
?>

Thanks a ton Craig, i have really appreciated your help.

Anon

<?
// read contents of file into array
$fcontents = file( $importFile);

// loop through the array and find links
while (list($k,$v)=each($fcontents)) {
// if the line contains "test="
if (strstr($v,"test=")) {
// explode and get the second half
list($waste, $text)=explode("text=",$v);
// create a new a new array with all the second parts
$text_collection[]=$text;
}
}
?>

I don't know if this will do the trick for you, but it should get you started. Part of doing this stuff is learning some by doing the research yourself. Check out how these and other functions work at php.net!