Regex help please!

[mykmallett]

I have been looking for the answer to this for about 2 days and it's becoming a nightmare. I need to let people enter an embed code from a specific website - Soundcloud. These look like this

<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Ffull-melt%2Fstrawberry-flava-mixtape&secret_url=false"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Ffull-melt%2Fstrawberry-flava-mixtape&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object>

All I want to do is validate them so that when I let it go into a database I know that it is not going to cause any damage and is in fact an embed code

I have this so far:

'/<object height=\"([0-9]*)\" width=\"[0-9]*%)\"> <param name=\"movie\" value=\"(.*)\"><\/param> <param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param> <embed allowscriptaccess=\"always\" height=\"[0-9]*\" src=\"(.*)\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"[0-9]*%)"><\/embed> <\/object>/'

But it is not validating.

First things I immediately think are problems are:

width=\"[0-9]*%)\" I do not believe will match width="100%"
type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" will not match type="application/x-shockwave-flash"

and also,
value=\"(.)\" will not match value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Ffull-melt%2Fstrawberry-flava-mixtape&secret_url=false" (similiarly with src=\"(.)\")

But I just can;t figure out how they should be altered. Regex seems to be an ocean of nonsensical characters and rules and google throws up the most pointless anwers.

If anyone could help me out here I would be eternally grateful.

[PradeepKr]

Try this, I checked it works,

<?php
$str = '<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Ffull-melt%2Fstrawberry-flava-mixtape&secret_url=false"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Ffull-melt%2Fstrawberry-flava-mixtape&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object>';

if(preg_match('!<object height="([0-9]*)" width="([0-9]*%)">\s*<param name="movie" value="([^"]*)">\s*</param>\s*<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always">\s*</param>\s*<embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="([0-9]*)" src="([^"]*)" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="([0-9]*%)"></embed>\s*</object>!',$str,$matches))
{
  echo "matches\n";
  print_r($matches);
  echo "\n";
}
else
{
  echo "not matches\n";
}
?>

Now,
1) You didn't use parentheses properly.
2) you shouldn't use (.) bluntly. It is greedy. Use either (.?)" or [^"] to match attribute values.
3) Use delimiters other than / when you know there are many slash in the string which need to escaped. Use other characters like ! or @ or % etc.
4) need not escape " and / (when ! is used as delimiter)
5) use \s in place of space. coz there can be many spaces.
6) to make it more robust I would recommend you should replace the space between attributes with \s*.
like this,

'!<object\s*height="([0-9]*)"\s*width="([0-9]*%)">\s*<param\s*name="movie"\s*value="([^"]*)">\s*</param>\s*<param\s*name="allowscriptaccess"\s*value="always">\s*</param>\s*<embed\s*allowscriptaccess="always"\s*height="([0-9]*)"\s*src="([^"]*)"\s*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"\s*width="([0-9]*%)">\s*</embed>\s*</object>!'

[mykmallett]

Thankyou! Really appreciate you time. I'll report back with my findings when I can put it in my app

[PradeepKr]

mykmallett;10961080 wrote:

Thankyou! Really appreciate you time. I'll report back with my findings when I can put it in my app

If it works ...use the regex which i suggested in last point. That should be more robust. I gave it separately because it doesn't look nice .