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=noob@live.com 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

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'];