How can I get an e-mail address out of a string of key=value pairs?

Question

How can I get some part of string that I need?

accountid=xxxxxx type=prem servertime=1256876305 addtime=1185548735 validuntil=1265012019 username=noob directstart=1 protectfiles=0 rsantihack=1 plustrafficmode=1 mirrors= jsconfig=1 [email protected] lots=0 fpoints=6076 ppoints=149 curfiles=38 curspace=3100655714 bodkb=60000000 premkbleft=25000000 ppointrate=116

I want data after email= but up to live.com.?

Answer 1

The following code only works if values contain no spaces:

uses
  StrUtils, Classes;

....

function GetPropertyValue (const PropertyName : String; const InputString : String) : String;
var
  StringList : TStringList;
  Str : String;
begin
Result := '';
StringList := TStringList.Create;
try
  StringList.Delimiter := ' ';
  StringList.DelimitedText := InputString;
  for Str in StringList do
    if StartsText (PropertyName + '=', Str) then
      Result := RightStr (Str, Length (Str) - Length (PropertyName) - 1);    
finally
  FreeAndNil (StringList);
end;
end;

Answer 2

My idea:

1. replace spaces with CRLF (it it is space separated)
2. load into TStringList
3. use values property with 'email' name

Answer 3

There are a couple of ways to do this. You could split the string on the space character then feed it into TStringList. You can then use TStringList's Value[String] property to get the value of a given name.

To do that, do a string replace of all spaces with commas:

newString := StringReplace(oldString, ' ', ',', [rfReplaceAll]);

Then import the result into a TStringList:

var
  MyStringList : TStringList;
begin
  MyStringList := TStringList.Create;
  try
    MyStringList.CommaText := StringReplace(oldString, ' ', ',', [rfReplaceAll]);
    Result := MyStringList.Values['email'];
  finally
    MyStringList.Free;
  end;
end;

This will give you the email value. You'll then need to split the string at the "@" symbol which is a relatively trivial exercise. Of course, this only works if spaces are genuinely a delimiter between fields.

Alternatively you could use a regular expression but Delphi doesn't support those natively (you'd need a regex library - see here)

*** Smasher noted (D2006+) Delimiter / Delimited text which would look something like this:

MyStringList.Delimiter := ' ';
MyStringList.DelimitedText := oldString;
Result := MyStringList.Values['email'];

Answer 4

Split the string into an array of string, using the '=' as the deliminator, you will then have an array with in this order: 'Key' then 'Value' you could then loop through looking for the 'email' key then simply add 1 to the array index to get the value. But this could fail in lots of ways (eg some one enters '=' as a character) or there are empty strings in the value field

Answer 5

Another idea, you could also use PosEx (StrUtils) with the StringList text:

function ExtractMyString(SrcStr, FromStr, ToStr: string): string;
var
  posBeg, posEnd: integer;
begin
  Result := '';
  posBeg := Pos(FromStr, SrcStr) + Length(FromStr);
  posEnd := PosEx(ToStr, SrcStr, posBeg);

  if (posBeg > 0) and (posEnd > posBeg) then
    Result := Copy(SrcStr, posBeg, posEnd-posBeg);
end;

Usage:

ExtractMyString(StringList.Text, 'email=', ' lots=');

Of course this will only work if the source string is always formatted the same way, would be handy for extracting the other data as needed.

Answer 6

assuming that the string is held in variable 's', and 'tmp' is another string variable,

i:= pos ('email=', s);
tmp:= '';
inc (i);
while s[i] <> ' ' do
 begin
  tmp:= tmp + s[i]; 
  inc (i);
 end;

'tmp' will hold the address