Regex Output to Textbox

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sarah
  • Start date Start date
S

Sarah

Hi -

I am extremely new to programming so I apologize in advance for my lack
of knowlege, vocabulary and if my code is sloppy. I will take any
suggestions to clean up my code and to follow any best pratices that I
missed. I am taking a stab at writing a program through Visual Basic
2005 Express Edition that will (don't laugh...) keep track, search
through and find new friends with specific interests on myspace. The
functionality of myspace is quite a let down so I thought I would try
to create a program to fill my need. I am stuck at the moment on
trying to do a httpWebRequest and regex to give me an output into a
textbox of friend IDs. Here my code so far that I have figured out
through researching the boards, msdn and using Expresso for my regular
expression:

' Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

Private Sub GetIDsButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e
As System.EventArgs) Handles GetIDsButton.Click

Dim myURL As String = ToolStripTextBox1.Text
Dim myReg As Net.HttpWebRequest =
DirectCast(Net.WebRequest.Create(myURL), _
Net.HttpWebRequest)
Dim myResp As Net.HttpWebResponse = _
DirectCast(myReg.GetResponse(), Net.HttpWebResponse)
Dim myStream As IO.Stream = myResp.GetResponseStream()
Dim myreader As New IO.StreamReader(myStream)
Dim myPage As String = myreader.ReadToEnd()
myResp.Close()

'' Regular expression built for Visual Basic on: Thu, Jul 6,
2006, 12:07:39 PM
'' Using Expresso Version: 2.1.2150, http://www.ultrapico.com
''
'' A description of the regular expression:
'' '' [1]: A numbered capture group. [\d{5,9}]
'' Any digit, between 5 and 9 repetitions
'' Match a suffix but exclude it from the capture. ["><img\b]
'' "><img\b
'' "><img
'' First or last character in a word
'
Dim r As Regex = New Regex( _
"(\d{5,9})(?=""><img\b)" + vbCrLf + "", _
RegexOptions.IgnoreCase _
Or RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace _
)
Dim m As RegularExpressions.Match
Dim mLink As RegularExpressions.Match
For Each m In r.Matches(myPage)
Next
TextBox1.Text = mLink



I am getting the error: 'Error 1 Value of type
'System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match' cannot be converted to
'String'.

Can someone help me figure out what I am doing wrong?
 
I haven't checked yet, but isn't Matches the collection of matches
returned?
Therefore your code would need to look like this:

For Each m In r.Matches
Next

Then of course you still need to pass your page, probably another
method I thinks.
But I could be wrong. The error indicates a type mismatch and I am
guessing that r.Matches(myPage) returns strings.
 
Thanks for writing me back Steven. I think you are exactly right. It
seems that I am trying to return a string from the collection of
matches which isn't possible. However I am totally lost about how to
work around this. I think I figure out how to get my webpage into a
stream and I think I even have the regular expression figured out, but
I am not sure how to pass in my streamed text to the regular expression
and then have the results output into a textbox. Any ideas? Also,
just to clarify the error is highlighting mLink and saying "Value of
type 'System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match' cannot be converted to
'String'." Which I think it is telling me exactly what you wrote
below, but I just wanted to add that.

Any ideas how I should code this to run my stream through and output
into a textbox?

Thanks again for your help.
 
Sarah said:
Hi -

I am extremely new to programming so I apologize in advance for my lack
of knowlege, vocabulary and if my code is sloppy. I will take any
suggestions to clean up my code and to follow any best pratices that I
missed. I am taking a stab at writing a program through Visual Basic
2005 Express Edition that will (don't laugh...) keep track, search
through and find new friends with specific interests on myspace. The
functionality of myspace is quite a let down so I thought I would try
to create a program to fill my need. I am stuck at the moment on
trying to do a httpWebRequest and regex
Click to expand...

I would strongly suggest you stop trying to use regex to parse html,
and instead track down HtmlAgilityPack which parses html and gives you
a nice document tree back. As a newbie this might look intimidating to
start with but believe me, getting used to working a document tree will
in the short and long term be far more enjoyable and useful than trying
to get regexes for parsing html right.
 
Check Larry's post below.
I'm not 100% on the syntax you need and MSDN site is running too slow
to use currently (is it just me?) so I can't check usage of the REGEX
class.

Larry's suggestion with a tree representation of elements sounds quite
useful, but not sure what sort of speed performance issues there are.
 
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