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.

Show quoteHide quote

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.


Steven Nagy wrote:
Show quoteHide quote

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.

Sarah wrote:
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.

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