Given a list of emails, formated:
"FirstName Last" <[email protected]>, "NewFirst NewLast" <[email protected]>
How can I build this into a string array of Only email addresses (I don't need the names).
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1Don’t use regular expressions, use a parser.Gumbo– Gumbo2009-12-02 14:58:59 +00:00Commented Dec 2, 2009 at 14:58
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Thanks guys, you pointed me in the right direction.pws5068– pws50682009-12-02 15:28:27 +00:00Commented Dec 2, 2009 at 15:28
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3 Answers
PHP’s Mailparse extension has a mailparse_rfc822_parse_addresses function you might want to try. Otherwise you should build your own address parser.
3 Comments
Ben James
+1 Reinventing the wheel = bad. Reinventing the wheel using regex = worse.
jensgram
+1 I got carried away with the regex approach. This seems to be the way to do it.
Arkh
Or, as read in this function comments, you can use this PEAR package : pear.php.net/manual/en/…
You could use preg_match_all (docs):
preg_match_all('/<([^>]+)>/', $s, $matches);
print_r($matches); // inspect the resulting array
Provided that all addresses are enclosed in < ... > there is no need to explode() the string $s.
EDIT In response to comments, the regex could be rewritten as '/<([^@]+@[^>]+)>/'. Not sure whether this is fail-safe, though :)
EDIT #2 Use a parser for any non-trivial data (see the comments below - email address parsing is a bitch). Some errors could, however, be prevented by removing duplicate addresses.
5 Comments
Welbog
And, of course, this fails on e-mail addresses like
">"@example.com. Isn't e-mail great? Not that this expression wouldn't work for every e-mail in practice, in theory it's wrong. +1 anyway.
Gumbo
What if the quoted display name contains
<…>?Welbog
Your failsafe still fails in theory:
"@>"@example.com E-mail sucks. Still, I'm liking the effort you're putting into this. You can't really parse e-mail perfectly with a regular expression. At least not a very simple one. I believe there's one floating around that's several hundred characters that does the job. ex-parrot.com/pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html Turns out it's several thousand characters.Gumbo
Now
"<[email protected]>" <[email protected]> will result in two addresses.jensgram
@Gumbo In that case (i.e. name can contain
< ... @ ...>) you should use a parser :)<?php
$s = "\"FirstName Last\" <[email protected]>, \"NewFirst NewLast\" <[email protected]>";
$emails = array();
foreach (split(",", $s) as $full)
{
preg_match("/.*<([^>]+)/", $full, $email);
$emails[] = $email[1];
}
print_r($emails);
?>
1 Comment
Gumbo
What if the quoted display name contains a comma?
