Extract link from value 'href="..."' 2

[solepixel]

I'm trying to figure out how to extract the part between the 'href="' and '"' in the string:

'href="/pagename/?stuff"'

So basically I've gotten the position of 'href="', then added 6 so it starts after that string, but how do i get the substr from that position to the NEXT quote (")?

something like:

$start = strpos($link_text,'href="') + 6;
$something = get first (") AFTER 'href="';
$url = substr($link_text,$start,$something);

 

[feherke]

Hi

$html="<a class=\"menu\" href=\"[URL unfurl="true"]http://example.com/path/\"[/URL] target=\"_top
\"></a>";
$url=ereg_replace(".*href=\"([^\"]*)\".*","\\1",$html);
echo "$url\n";

http://example.com/path/

Note that the above code does exactly what you asked for. Unfortunately people may enclose their attributes in single quotes too.

( Yes jpadie, I know, regular expressions should be avoided as much as possible... ;-) )

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[jet042]

Try a strpos() with the $offset set to ($start + 1). It would look something like this:

$something = [red]strpos($link_text,'"',($start+1));
$length = $something - $start;[/red]

$url = substr($link_text, $start, [red]$length[/red]);

Notice the change to the way substr() is called. The third parameter is the length of the string to be returned, not the stop point as you seem to be using it.

 

[vacunita]

How about something like:

$href='href="/pagename/?stuff"';
$linkparts=explode('"',$href);

$thepartyouwant=$linkparts[1];
echo $thepartyouwant;

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[feherke]

Hi

Well, if we have to extract only from strings like that :

$url=substr($html,6,strlen($html)-7);

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[solepixel]

I think I wanted to go with the offset method. I for some stupid reason thought offset meant how many to skip... so i set it to 1, 2, 3, and no change. Now I know why.

$start = strpos($link_text,'href="') + 6;
$end = strpos($link_text,'"',$start+1) - 6;
$single_url = substr($link_text,$start,$end);

Thanks for all the help, but unfortunately, I can't use:

$url=substr($html,6,strlen($html)-7);

because sometimes there's more things inside the "link text" like onclick or target=...

The explode thing wouldn't work since the href=" part might not necessarily be the first thing in the text.

Lastly, Regex... I would consider that a last resort and since the offset thing worked, I will put it away for another day. Thanks again everyone.

 

[jpadie]

that does not look like a great method. you cannot allow for tags like this

<img class="someclass" href="someimage.jpg">

nor that use single quotes instead of double quotes.

I would go for feherke's method but substitute ereg for preg_match. My understanding is that ereg will be taken out (at least by default) of php6 for release and PRCE will be pre-loaded (by default). Also preg_* i believe, is quite a bit faster than ereg.

the pattern i'd recommend looks like this

$pattern = '/<.*?href *?=[\'"](.*?)[\'"].*?>/i';

$text = "<img class=\'someclass\' href=\"[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.domain.com/somewhere.php\"[/URL] tag=\"something else\">";
preg_match($pattern, $text, $matches);

the url is contained in $matches[1].

the pattern is not perfect since the second quote should really look back to match the first quote, but having a quote within a url is invalid anyway: so hopefully this won't matter in practice.

 

[feherke]

Hi

Well, life is a bit... call girl and these are valid in both HTML 4.01 Strict and XHTML 1.0 Strict :-( :

<a href="bla'bla"></a>
<a href='bla"bla'></a>

So your pattern should be like below and the URL will be in $matches[2] :

$pattern = '/<.*?href *?=([\'"])([^\\1]*?)\\1.*?>/i';

Man, I have to read more about regular expressions. I do not master yet the non-greedy [tt]?[/tt]. Thanks jpadie.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[jpadie]

neat fix. of course it doesn't work for the scenario that we both missed: the non-compliant complete lack of quotes with no spaces!

<img href=somepage.php class=someclass>

I only dabble with regular expressions after a coffee. without the caffeine hit my brain does not twist well enough...

 

[jet042]

For help with regular expressions, you can check out the series of blogs by Eric Lippert on the subject. An index is here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/dansellers/archive/2006/03/03/543287.aspx.

It is 12 posts long and goes deep into the math behind them. It is also probably more than you want to know.

 

[solepixel]

haha, thank you all for trying to fix this for every possible scenario, however I guess what I failed to mention is the code this is using is something I also wrote so I know it will always contain double quotes. This is definitely useful for someone else needing the same thing tho.