php remove emails and web address from text

louie

I have user adding content and description to a website, but I would like to see a way of checking if they submit web and email addresses included into the textarea form and remove it if any.

Anybody has any ideeas how?

Adam

I wouldn't know the code to use off, but you could simply check for anything that falls into the format of name@domain.com or www.domain.com in the text area. You could steal the email check from email validation scripts, there's plenty of good format checkers around for free!

louie

i can not use the email validators because they check a string to make sure it has the @ and the . after, making it a valid email address.

i need to look for the entire string and if found, remove it from the post

seamus

louie wrote:

i can not use the email validators because they check a string to make sure it has the @ and the . after, making it a valid email address.

You can use a well written regexp to match email addresses, you should be able to find one on php.net.

There are a few simple rules for email addresses which make them easy enough to isolate from normal text:
1. They never contain spaces
2. There are certain characters that they cannot contain (!, " and ^ to name but three)

4. They always end with a dot, followed by a domain name which is no less than 2 and no more than 4 characters long.

Even just building a regexp based on these rules, you're unlikely to generate any false postives.

A regexp for matching web addresses may take more effort, but it should be possible in the end.

Adam

Thats the kind of thing I was talking about, searching the text area for a string in the specific email format. Most of the rules apply similarly to web addresses so it should be possible too.

louie

i spent more then an hour on google looking for all posibilities and found nothing. I remember doing something similar using asp, few years back, but i can not find it now and no samples availalble in php.

I keep looking arround but doesn't seem to get lucky or i am not looking for the right thing.

Adam

This looks like exactly what you want for the email part, should be easily edited to run automatically:

[php]<?php

###############################################################
# Email Extractor 1.0
###############################################################
# Visit http://www.zubrag.com/scripts/ for updates
###############################################################
?>

<form method="post">
Please enter full URL of the page to parse (including http://):<br />
<input type="text" name="url" size="65" /><br />
or enter text directly into textarea below:<br />
<textarea name="text" cols="50" rows="15"></textarea>
<br />
<input type="submit" value="Parse Emails" />
</form>

<?php
if (isset($_REQUEST) && !empty($_REQUEST)) {
// fetch data from specified url
$text = file_get_contents($_REQUEST);
}
elseif (isset($_REQUEST) && !empty($_REQUEST)) {
// get text from text area
$text = $_REQUEST;
}

// parse emails
if (!empty($text)) {
$res = preg_match_all(
"/[a-z0-9]+([_\\.-][a-z0-9]+)*@([a-z0-9]+([\.-][a-z0-9]+)*)+\\.[a-z]{2,}/i",
$text,
$matches
);

if ($res) {
foreach(array_unique($matches[0]) as $email) {
echo $email . "<br />";
}
}
else {
echo "No emails found.";
}
}

?>[/php]

louie

thanks for the example.
using that and make few modifications to suit me i came up with this if anybody ever needs it:

[PHP]// parse emails
if (!empty($text)) {
//match emails
$res_email = preg_match_all("/[a-z0-9]+([_\\.-][a-z0-9]+)*@([a-z0-9]+([\.-][a-z0-9]+)*)+\\.[a-z]{2,}/i",$text,$matches);

//clean email if found
if ($res_email) {
$i = 0;
foreach(array_unique($matches[$i]) as $email) {
$text = str_replace($email,"",$text);
$i++;
}
}
//match web addresses
$res_www = preg_match_all("/[a-z0-9]+([a-z0-9]+)*.([a-z0-9]+([\.-][a-z0-9]+)*)+\\.[a-z]{2,}/i", $text, $matches);
//clean web addresses if found
if ($res_www) {
$i = 0;
foreach(array_unique($matches[$i]) as $www) {
$text = str_replace($www,"",$text);
$i++;
}
}

echo "<br />".$text;
}[/PHP]

Adam

No problem!