XHTML 1.1 form to PHP Array.

form_to_array.py

# coding: utf-8
"""
Convert a XHTML 1.1 compliant form to a php array with Python (YIKES! :D)
"""

import re

# Put your form in here!
s = """
    <form action="foobar.php" method="post" accept-charset="utf8">
        <p>
            <label for="this">This</label>
            <input type="text" name="this" id="this" />
        </p>
        <p>
            <label for="that">That</label>
            <textarea name="that" id="that"></textarea>
        </p>
        <p>
            <label for="like">Like</label>
            <input type="file" name="like" id="like" />
        </p>
        <p>
            <label for="gibberish">Gibberish</label>
            <select name="gibberish" id="gibberish">
                <option value="0">0</option>
                <option value="1">1</option>
            </select>
        </p>
    </form>
"""

nodes = re.split('<|>|/(\w+)>|/>', s)
attribute_trees = []
for node in nodes:
    try:
        # TODO: select->option parsing
        if 'input' in node or 'textarea' in node or 'select' in node:
            # only parse nodes with 'name' in them
            # those are the ones we want for our PHP array
            if 'name' in node:
                tag_tree = node.split()
                # isolate the tagname
                attributes = tag_tree[1:]
                # create a list full of [attribute, value] trees
                attribute_trees.append(map(lambda x: x.split('='), attributes))
    # it may happen that we have something which is not a string on l19
    except TypeError:
        pass

# Create our PHP array
php = 'array('
setComma = False
for attribute_tree in attribute_trees:
    for attribute, value in attribute_tree:
        # usually only ´name´ matters
        if attribute == 'name':
            # set commas after the first element
            if setComma: php += ', '
            # don't put "", so php doesn't try to search for something in namespace
            php_value = value.replace('"', "'")
            # add it to our php array string
            php += '%s => $_POST[%s]' % (php_value, php_value)
            # now we want to set commas :)
            setComma = True
php += ')'

print php