Regular Expression to extract a url included in a string

Question

I looked around for a while, but probably I can't "Google" with the proper keywords, so I'm asking here. I need to extract the url from a string, using regexp (php)

A simple example should be helpful:

Target: extract the url http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle

Base string:

/url?q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle&sa=U&ei=VpnIUP22Js3B0gWKhoCgCQ&ved=0CB0QFjAA&usg=AFQjCNGS7-bieZB8Vh7xR5sjOy-KT86ANQ

Just FYI, take a look at this tool: gskinner.com/RegExr Really helps testing regex expressions. — jValdron
– jValdron, Commented Dec 12, 2012 at 14:57

Martin Ender · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-12 15:01:05Z

4

There are better options than regex to do this. For instance, PHP provides the two functions parse_url and parse_str which do exactly what you want:

$query = parse_url($string, PHP_URL_QUERY);
parse_str($query, $parameters);
$result = $parameters['q'];

That is, of course, only unless you need to use regular expressions, because that is all your framework provides or because it's some kind of exercise.

answered Dec 12, 2012 at 15:01

Martin Ender

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ke20 · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-12 15:06:13Z

0

Test this regex: /q=([^&]+)/i

<?php
  $url = '/url?q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle&sa=U&ei=VpnIUP22Js3B0gWKhoCgCQ&ved=0CB0QFjAA&usg=AFQjCNGS7-bieZB8Vh7xR5sjOy-KT86ANQ';
  $pattern = '/q=([^&]+)/i';
  preg_match($pattern, $url, $res);
  echo $res[1];
?>

edited Dec 12, 2012 at 15:06

answered Dec 12, 2012 at 14:56

ke20

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