[thelist] condensing 4 regexes to 1?

[Alex Beston]

Hi evolters

http://www.markbarton.com/blog/articles/FAST-6E8BQF contains a hack to
get the post code out of a gmap's url output and mentions it can be
parsed out. this is  a proof of concept for a mashup im making rather
than an actual attempt to rip off google, so bear with me.

below is my attempt but its way too long.

so heres what i did (see code at end):

get this bit:

center: {lat: 57.138801,lng: -2.120481

from the output of http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=ab106qr&output=js

then split on the comma and regex the two bits and its done.

i thought a way to condense the code is to bung the

center: {lat: 57.138801

and the

,lng: -2.120481

into cells of the matches array on the first regex thus avoiding a
preg_split. or another way of putting it, is it possible to write one
regex that matches different parts of a string and places the result
into several parts of an array? such that:

(pseudocode)
string = ABCDEFGHIJKL

match BCD and GHI place into matches[0] and matches[1] respectively

anyway, so i have 4 regexes and  there ought to be a way to get this
down to 2 regexs or even one.

any ideas?

ta!

Alex


---

code:

<?php

$myurl = "http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=ab106qr&output=js";

$myhtml = getURL($myurl);

$pattern = '/center: \{lat: (|-)[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{6},lng:
(|-)[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{6}/';

preg_match($pattern, $myhtml , $matches);


$chars = preg_split('/,/', $matches[0], -1, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

$pattern = "/(|-)[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{6}/";

preg_match($pattern, $chars[0][0] , $matches);
$latitude = $matches[0];

preg_match($pattern, $chars[1][0] , $matches);
$longitude = $matches[0];

echo "latitude: ".$latitude." longitude: ".$longitude;


function getURL($popped){
  $fail = "failed";
  $remote = @fopen ($popped, "rb");
  if (!$remote){
      print($popped." FAILED");
      return $fail;
      }

  else{
      $html = "";
      do {
          $data = fread($remote, 8192);
          if (strlen($data) == 0) {
              break;
          }
          $html .= $data;
          } while(true);
      fclose ($remote);
      return $html;
      }
}




?>