Preg_match Help?

[ihenman]

Now for someone who has used the preg_match function I'm sure this is a simple question but I have not done anywork with it yet, so I'm finding my self a bit confused.

I've got a function that retrieves the Form elements from a given url and returns something like this

<form action=something.php method=post>
<input type=text name=field1 size=25>
<input type=text name=field2 size=40>

<input type=checkbox name=field3 value=yes>
<input type=checkbox name=field3 value=no>

etc.... Until form is done then Submit
<input type=submit value=Submit>

So it basically parses everything else form the page...what I'm trying to firgue out is how I can use preg_match_all to pull out all the input TYPES and NAMES of each element, so I can store them in my DB.

I'm pretty sure that PREG_match is the function I want to use but cannot seem to put together what I need?

I tried a couple of things like this
preg_match_all('/name="(.*?)"/i',$file,$matches);

where $file is the string of the FOrm info...but it's not working out for me? Any help is appreciated this seems to be a function I should learn the ins and outs of anyways.

[Weedpacket]

One of the things you'll want to watch out for is people who don't bother quoting their attribute values (e.g., you yourself in your examples 🙂).

Here's something that can be adapted to pull any one attribute from any one type of tag. Having it pull two (name and type) is a little trickier, because they can come in either order (and in the case of text fields, type might not be present).

Um...

[ihenman]

WeedPacket

Thanks...I see what you mean from that link you sent re: quoting the names etc. :-(

So I should be able to use something like this to get the Names

preg_match_all(
"/name\s=\s([\"']?)(.+?)\1.*?>/is",
$string,
$matches
);

I'm thinking there should be something else in there though to end the match at the next \s after comparing from the '=' sign? does that make sense?

I know I want ena exact match but it isn't case sensitive so I can leave the other stuff there.

One other question in a lot of examples I found around the web there a was a ^ char in the regexp definition. What is that reffering too?

[Weedpacket]

The meaning of ^ (and everything else) is of course covered in the manual. It has two meanings depending on where it's used (well, three, but "the ^ character" is pretty much a given!) - it's either "the start of the string" or, inside a character class, "not one of the following characters".

Not sure what you mean by "match at the next \s after comparing from the '=' sign". Match what? After any space (the \s*) there should be a quote of some sort or at least the name itself (.+?).