Running a regular expression on the HTML of the current page

[pplers]

[PHP]if(eregi("something", $xxxxx)){
return true;
}else{
return false;
}[/PHP]

I have that regexp and want to make $xxxxx be the HTML webpage the user is seeing with his browser. For example: the file in which the regexp is, it-s called s.php and it has an html form and lot of other functions.
So i want to refer $xxxxx to the HTML code the user is currently seeing

[pbmods]

Heya, Pplers.

Changed thread title to better describe the problem.

Depending on how you are generating the HTML, you may find it more pragmatic to do something like this:

$somethingEchoed = false;
if( {condition} )
{
    echo 'something';
    $somethingEchoed = true;
}
 
.
.
.
.
 
// Instead of eregi()ing for 'something'...
return $somethingEchoed;
 

Where is the HTML that you'd like to parse coming from?

[pplers]

from other functions in other pages.

[pbmods]

Heya, Pplers.

That's tricky. You have a couple of options:

• You can set the value of a global variable when whatever it is gets output.
• If this is not an option, you can use output buffering. Call this at the start of your script:
  

  ob_start('checkForSomething');
   
  function checkForSomething( $str )
  {
      if( eregi('something', $str) )
      {
          // Don't just do something, sit there!
      }
   
      return $str;
  }
   

  And then at the end of your script, when you want to check for the 'something':
  

  ob_end_flush();
   

[pplers]

but how should i call the function with the argument, i mean what should $str be ?
I just want the ereg to return True/False so i am talking what i did above, but how do i call the function ?

[pbmods]

Heya, Pplers.

Do the functions that generate the HTML return it or echo it?

If they return the HTML, then you can simply use a variable to store the return values of your functions and then echo it when you are done.

If your functions output the HTML, then you'll have to use output buffering.

Note that you never actually explicitly call checkForSomething(). Instead, you pass it as a callback to ob_start(). When you call ob_end_flush(), PHP will automatically call checkForSomething() and pass all of the HTML that it was buffering (everything that your functions echoed) as $str.

Here's a simple example:

function processOutput($str)
{
    return '<strong>' . $str . '</strong>';
}
 
ob_start('processOutput');
 
echo 'Hello, World!';
 
// Note that NOTHING has been output yet; it's in the output buffer.
 
ob_end_flush();  // Here is where the text gets output.
 

When this code executes, PHP turns on output buffering so that anything we echo, print, etc., gets put into a temporary buffer. When we call ob_start(), we assign a callback to the processOutput() function.

When we echo 'Hello, World!', because output buffering is active, instead of sending the text to the browser, we save the text in the output buffer instead.

Then when we call ob_end_flush(), the callback (processOutput()) gets called, and PHP passes all of the buffered text ('Hello, World!') to it.

processOutput() takes $str ('Hello, World!') and surrounds it with HTML strong tags. Then it returns the resulting string, which ob_end_flush() then sends to the browser.

The end result:

<strong>Hello, World!</strong>