Parsing using strtok() and sscanf()

**NuNn** · 02-12-2009

I am trying to parse a very large string one line at a time and then parse each individual line. I know the set up of the first line which is "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" and I am successfully able to use strtok() and read in the line. However, when I try to use sscanf to further parse this line I receive a seg. fault. Here is the code which I have.

Code:

      dummy = strtok(message, "\n");
      fprintf(stdout, "%s\n", dummy);
      sscanf(dummy, "%*s %s %*s", code);
      fprintf(stdout, "%s\n", code);

or is there an easier way to do this?

**tabstop** · 02-12-2009

What are you trying to accomplish here? What is message, are you really only using strtok to remove the \n, and what do you expect to happen?

**NuNn** · 02-12-2009

I was just trying to read in a line at a time. and then parse the line. Is strtok() removing the '\n' and causing the sscanf() to not be able to parse? I just would like to be able to parse each line of a HTTP response and assign the code value, server information, content-length, and such.

**tabstop** · 02-12-2009

If you don't know why you're using strtok, why should we?

What strtok does, is look for any of the characters given in the last argument, and replaces them with string-terminating \0 characters. So the first \n in the string gets replaced with \0 and a pointer to the front of the string is returned.

That won't cause a segfault that I can see, unless message is a string literal (possible based on what you're saying). However, it does not go get any new data from anywhere. And sscanf won't ever segfault, I'm pretty sure, it will just return a matching error if there aren't three strings in the dummy string to match on.

**NuNn** · 02-12-2009

What function would you recommend that I use to parse this in such a way?

**tabstop** · 02-12-2009

Given that you haven't yet stated what you want to do in any way at all, I have no idea what I would use to parse your input.

If all you want is the "middle" of the line, as somewhat indicated by your sscanf statement, then I would use fgets to read the line, sscanf to get one of the strings out of the middle, lather, rinse, repeat.

**NuNn** · 02-12-2009

I already have the input read into a string of characters so I don't think fgets would work here as that reads in from a stream. Is there another function that I could use in a similar manner as fgets but would read from a char*

What I would like to do is take the input of:

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 1354

and parse that so:

code = 200
date = Fri, 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT
Content-Type = text/html
Content-Length = 1354

**tabstop** · 02-12-2009

Can we maybe get some context here? What does message contain when you print it out, and what do you want to get out of the message itself?

**NuNn** · 02-12-2009

Here is the message which I store to my message variable when I receive it from the server:

Code:

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:58:51 GMT
Expires: -1
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=6269c8db0cc2c042:TM=1234468731:LM=1234468731:S=pkuulnOa71dLbRRN; expires=Sat, 12-Feb-2011 19:58:51 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
Server: gws

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All I care about from this is using the variables I have named:

Code:

char *code
char *server
char *lastModified
char *date
char *contentType
int contentlength
char *body

And assigning these values if they exist in the Header Lines of the HTTP response if they exist, otherwise I set them to unknown

Code:

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:58:51 GMT
Expires: -1
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=6269c8db0cc2c042:TM=1234468731:LM=1234468731:S=pkuulnOa71dLbRRN; expires=Sat, 12-Feb-2011 19:58:51 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
Server: gws

So from this I would want to assign:

code to 200
server to gws
lastModified to unknown
contentLength to unkown
..etc

my body variable would contain the rest of the <html> and my message variable is holding the entire response currently

**rags_to_riches** · 02-12-2009

Here is an example program:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

const char *HEADERS = "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n"
"Cache-Control: private, max-age=0\r\n"
"Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:50:54 GMT\r\n"
"Expires: -1\r\n"
"Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\r\n"
"Set-Cookie: cookie_data; expires=Sat, 12-Feb-2011 19:50:54 GMT; "
"path=/; domain=.google.com\r\n"
"Server: gws\r\n"
"Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";

int main()
{
   char *hdrs[8] = { 0 };
   const char *start = HEADERS, *end = NULL, *eoh = NULL;
   unsigned int i = 0, j = 0;
   eoh = strstr(HEADERS, "\r\n\r\n");
   while ((end = strstr(start, "\r\n")) != NULL && end > start)
   {
      hdrs[i] = malloc(end - start + 1);
      strncpy(hdrs[i], start, end - start);
      hdrs[i][end - start] = 0;
      ++i;
      if (end == eoh)
         break;
      start = end + strlen("\r\n");
   }

   for (; j < i; ++j)
   {
      printf("%d - %s\n", j, hdrs[j]);
      free(hdrs[j]);
   }
   return 0;
}

**tabstop** · 02-12-2009

Alright. So, I would guess the idea would be to read a word at a time; if the word matches some magic key, then the next word/the rest of the line gets copied to your variable. Are you planning to have the char *s point into the message body itself, or allocate new memory for them?

**NuNn** · 02-12-2009

If you mean by the message body the actual html code, I am just having a char * that points to it and gets assigned the entire html and thats it as for that. The only other items I care about parsing are the header lines from the HTTP request

**tabstop** · 02-12-2009

Originally Posted by NuNn

If you mean by the message body the actual html code, I am just having a char * that points to it and gets assigned the entire html and thats it as for that. The only other items I care about parsing are the header lines from the HTTP request

That's not really the question, no. You have char* variables code, server, lastModified, etc. Are you planning to just make those point to where the data lives already, or get new memory and make a copy? If the former you can strtok (on spaces too, not just on new-line) your way through the thing, watching for your keywords (and remember that after the first call, you should use NULL for the first parameter of strtok), assuming the data is not const. If the second, then you can use strstr to find your keywords and go from there.

**NuNn** · 02-12-2009

I figured out a way I believe that works pretty effectively, thank you for your time and help though tabstop and rags_to_riches. Have a great one!

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