Getting URL from text

kvnband

OK, I have written a script and emails are piped to this script. The script then stores the body to a database. All of this is working great. However, I don't need the whole body. All I need is one URL from the body of all of these emails. Here is what an email might contain:

Subject: Share, Name has invited you to open a Google mail account
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

Name has invited you to open a free Gmail account.

To accept this invitation and register for your account, visit
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-random string of letters and numbers
Once you create your account, Name will be notified with
your new email address so you can stay in touch with Gmail!

If you haven't already heard about Gmail, it's a new search-based webmail
service that offers:

Over 2,500 megabytes (two gigabytes) of free storage

Built-in Google search that instantly finds any message you want

Automatic arrangement of messages and related replies into
"conversations"

Text ads and related pages that are relevant to the content of your
messages

Gmail is still in an early stage of development. But if you set up an
account, you'll be able to keep it even after we make Gmail more
widely available. We might also ask for your comments and suggestions
periodically and we appreciate your help in making Gmail even better.

Thanks,

The Gmail Team

To learn more about Gmail before registering, visit:
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/benefits.html

(If clicking the URLs in this message does not work, copy and paste them
into the address bar of your browser).

Obviously, I am trying to store that unique URL to a variable so I can put it into the database. Can someone help me out here?

Thanks,
Kevin

halojoy

you should search for
'http://'
in text

If you scroll down a bit you will find a String Function that will do your job
http://www.phpbuilder.com/manual/ref.strings.php

kvnband

Not seeing what I need there. I figured that I'd be using explode(), but I'm sure I'm mistaken. I have a feeling I'll have to do something with regular expressions, since that part at the end is random, but I have no idea how.
Kevin

kvnband

I think I may have just had a stroke of genius (was just sitting here and thought about it). Can I explode the string at the / ? And then just join them back together into a single string? If that's the way to do it, then how do I deal with the 'http://'?
Thanks,
Kevin

Weedpacket

[man]preg_match[/man] is there.

http://\S*

at a quick glance.

kvnband

Well, trying

<?php
preg_match("/^(http:\/\/)/S",
   "http://mail.google.com/mail/a-1654ad9654ads6d654ad987d", $matches);
$host = $matches[0];
echo $host;

just gives me http:// and nothing else. Adding a * after the S gives me an error. There aren't many good regex tips online that I can find. I'm getting close, but not quite there yet. Any help anyone?
Kevin

kvnband

GOT IT! Finally, after playing with it for quite awhile, and reading up on regex, I got the following:

preg_match("/^(ht|f)tp(s?)\:\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9\-\._]+(\.[a-zA-Z0-9\-\._]+){2,}(\/?)([a-zA-Z0-9\-\.\?\,\'\/\\\+&%\$#_]*)?$/"

and since google sometimes uses http and sometimes uses https, I went ahead and adapted it for further use. And it works!!!
Thanks for the links.
Kevin

kvnband

Grr, Well, when the link is the only thing in the body text, that works great. But if there is a space or anything else in the body besides the link, the the preg_match doesn't get it. Can someone please help me out here?
Kevin

Weedpacket

Lose the ^ at the start and the $ at the end. (Check back with your regexp references to see why).

Oh, and putting delimiters around what I wrote would make it /http:\/\/\S/ - or !http://\S! which is probably easier to read; not what you had.

kvnband

Weedpacket wrote:
Lose the ^ at the start and the $ at the end. (Check back with your regexp references to see why).

Figured it out a couple of hours ago ;-)
Thanks though.
Kevin

Weedpacket

Then mark the thread resolved if it is, please.