extracting multiple emails from text field

jbone

I wish take text in from a multiline text field and be able to extract vaild email syntax and send them to a function one at a time.

i.e. Take in:
"asdf@asdf.com, jklasje@askldjf.ca; "Some non email junk that should be ignored", another@email.com

More@emails.com, done@here.com"

and have it send just the vaild email parts to a function, one at a time.

Any thoughts?

Shrike

You'd need to require that each email address is either on a different line, or separated by some given character. Assuming a newline separator:

$validemails = array();
$_POST['textareaname'] = split("\n", $_POST['textareaname']);
foreach($_POST['textareaname'] as $value){
  //Check this is a valid email address
  preg_match("/.*?\@([-\w]+\\.)+[-\w]+$/", $value)
    and array_push($validemails, $value);
}
print_r($validemails);

The regexp might need some work, for example it would allow

 [email]foo@bar.this[/email]isisarediculouslylongstringwhichyouprobablyshouldntaccept

Note - the vBulletin regexp is better hehehe 🙂

HTH

jbone

Is there not a way that i can read it char by char adding it to a string until i reach a character that is definately not part of a valid email address and when i reach this point i go and check my string to see if it is a valid email? then reset the string to null and keep going?

do you understand what i mean?

mattsinclair

you could do it that way, but why would you when you can use regex?

jbone

would that not allow for anything to be between the email addresses instead of it having to be set characters?

mattsinclair

regex is EXTREMELY powerful.

it allows you to define a character set... char sets are defined between []. check the php manual for detailed description.

function isEmail( $strIn ) {
  $strIn = preg_replace( "/[^\x20-\xFF]/", "" , @strval( $strIn ) );
  if ( !trim( $strIn ) || !preg_match( "/^[a-z0-9._-]{1,20}@(([a-z0-9-]+\.)+(com|net|org|mil|edu|gov|arpa|info|biz|inc|name|[a-z]{2})|[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3})$/is", $strIn ) )  return 0;
  return $strIn;
}

something like that will match most emails, returning TRUE if it's a valid email. you can change it up to suit your needs.

knashash

Ok Bro I Think I got what you are looking for:

To extract email addresses from a file you can use the following code:

$file1 = "Your File";
if (!($removeFile = fopen($file1, "r"))) exit("Unable to open the list file.");
$z = 0;
$file_array = array();
while (!feof ($removeFile))
{
$buffer = fgets($removeFile, 5000);
if (preg_match('/\b[A-Z0-9.%-]+@[A-Z0-9.%-]+.[A-Z0-9._%-]{2,4}\b/i', $buffer, $matches))
{

	$file_array[$z] = $matches[0];
}
$z++;
//echo $buffer;

}

The above code reads through a file line by line and takes whatever matches it finds and places in to a useable array.