PHP Regular Expressions (REGEX) Multipart MIME (NOT-EMAIL)

Question

I'm trying to do a "preg match all" on the response below to get all the binary data. I've tried just about everything imaginable and for the life of me, can't get anything.

I was hoping it'd be as simple as doing something like this:

preg_match_all("#\n\n(.*)\n--$boundary#",$body,$matches);

But I can't get anything. I've tried other stuff too. \r \n | i s m U - I just can't get it for some reason.

Here is a pseudo response not including the headers:

--boundary
content-type:image/jpeg

<binary data>
--boundary
content-type:image/jpeg

<binary data>
--boundary
content-type:image/jpeg

<binary data>
--boundary

unfortunately the binary data isn't enclosed with < & > it's just raw data with special characters over the course of multiple lines...

also: i think the problem lies within the actual binary data that is being displayed because when i run a preg match all on the info above it works just fine but when i try it on the actual data that has all the binary data crap in it, it doesn't work.

Answer 1

I don't have an answer regarding your regular expressions, but did you have a look at Zend_Mime?

Answer 2

You're expression seems to work fine for me on the data you provided. I pulled down your output.php, and renamed it output.txt, then ran this script:

<?php

$body = file_get_contents('output.txt');
$boundary = '__NEXT_PART_gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p__';
preg_match_all("#\n\n(.*)\n--$boundary#",$body,$matches);
print_r($matches);

Seems to have worked fine, ie it printed this:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 

    [body] => 
--__NEXT_PART_gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p__
            [1] => 

ÿ( RAW IMAGE DATA CONTINUES OVER MULTIPLE LINES starts with "ÿ" ends with "ÿÙ" )ÿÙ
--__NEXT_PART_gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p__
            [2] => 

ÿ( RAW IMAGE DATA CONTINUES OVER MULTIPLE LINES starts with "ÿ" ends with "ÿÙ" )ÿÙ
--__NEXT_PART_gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p__
            [3] => 

ÿ( RAW IMAGE DATA CONTINUES OVER MULTIPLE LINES starts with "ÿ" ends with "ÿÙ" )ÿÙ
--__NEXT_PART_gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p__
            [4] => 

ÿ( RAW IMAGE DATA CONTINUES OVER MULTIPLE LINES starts with "ÿ" ends with "ÿÙ" )ÿÙ
--__NEXT_PART_gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p__
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] =>     [body] => 
            [1] => ÿ( RAW IMAGE DATA CONTINUES OVER MULTIPLE LINES starts with "ÿ" ends with "ÿÙ" )ÿÙ
            [2] => ÿ( RAW IMAGE DATA CONTINUES OVER MULTIPLE LINES starts with "ÿ" ends with "ÿÙ" )ÿÙ
            [3] => ÿ( RAW IMAGE DATA CONTINUES OVER MULTIPLE LINES starts with "ÿ" ends with "ÿÙ" )ÿÙ
            [4] => ÿ( RAW IMAGE DATA CONTINUES OVER MULTIPLE LINES starts with "ÿ" ends with "ÿÙ" )ÿÙ
        )

)

Looks like the $matches[1] contains the list of binary data you're after.

Answer 3

Ok, well I'm not all that familiar with PHP regular expressions...

Considering what you are trying to do, the dot-matches-newline s switch should work. Using this regular expression seemed to work on my end:

/<binary data>\r\n(.*?)\r\n--simple boundary/s

The *? should be non-greedy, and so it will gobble only so much as to match the very first --simple boundary text string it sees.

Your line endings may differ from mine (I'm on a Windows machine), so you may have to fire up a hex editor to see exactly what should be matched before and after the <binary data> content.

Answer 4

\n is platform dependent. Presumably your data is a http-request or an email? In this case, line breaks will be \r\n, so you need to test for that instead

Answer 5

Alternatively, you could parse with explode() this should be much faster, it's not too complex, and it gives you the header info if you want it:

<?php

$body = file_get_contents('output.txt');
$boundary = '__NEXT_PART_gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p__';
$parts = explode("--$boundary", $body);
array_shift($parts); # delete up to the first boundary
array_pop($parts); # delete after the last boundary

$binaries = array();
foreach($parts as $part) {
    list($header, $binary) = explode("\n\n", $part, 2);
    $binaries[] = $binary;
}    

print_r($binaries);