How can I get parameters from a URL string?

All the parameters after ? can be accessed using $_GET array. So,

echo $_GET['email'];

will extract the emails from urls.

Use the parse_url() and parse_str() methods. parse_url() will parse a URL string into an associative array of its parts. Since you only want a single part of the URL, you can use a shortcut to return a string value with just the part you want. Next, parse_str() will create variables for each of the parameters in the query string. I don't like polluting the current context, so providing a second parameter puts all the variables into an associative array.

$url = "https://mysite.com/test/[email protected]&testin=123";
$query_str = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY);
parse_str($query_str, $query_params);
print_r($query_params);

//Output: Array ( [email] => [email protected] [testin] => 123 ) 

As mentioned in another answer, the best solution is using parse_url().

You need to use a combination of parse_url() and parse_str().

The parse_url() parses the URL and return its components that you can get the query string using the query key. Then you should use parse_str() that parses the query string and returns values into a variable.

$url = "https://example.com/test/1234?basic=2&[email protected]";
parse_str(parse_url($url)['query'], $params);
echo $params['email']; // [email protected]

Also you can do this work using regex: preg_match()

You can use preg_match() to get a specific value of the query string from a URL.

preg_match("/&?email=([^&]+)/", $url, $matches);
echo $matches[1]; // [email protected]

preg_replace()

Also you can use preg_replace() to do this work in one line!

$email = preg_replace("/^https?:\/\/.*\?.*email=([^&]+).*$/", "$1", $url);
// [email protected]

Use $_GET['email'] for parameters in URL. Use $_POST['email'] for posted data to script. Or use _$REQUEST for both. Also, as mentioned, you can use parse_url() function that returns all parts of URL. Use a part called 'query' - there you can find your email parameter. More info: http://php.net/manual/en/function.parse-url.php

You can use the below code to get the email address after ? in the URL:

<?php
if (isset($_GET['email'])) {
    echo $_GET['email'];
}

I a created function from Ruel's answer.

You can use this:

function get_valueFromStringUrl($url , $parameter_name)
{
    $parts = parse_url($url);
    if(isset($parts['query']))
    {
        parse_str($parts['query'], $query);
        if(isset($query[$parameter_name]))
        {
            return $query[$parameter_name];
        }
        else
        {
            return null;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        return null;
    }
}

Example:

$url = "https://example.com/test/the-page-here/1234?someurl=key&[email protected]";
echo get_valueFromStringUrl($url , "email");

Thanks to @Ruel.

$web_url = 'http://www.writephponline.com?name=shubham&[email protected]';
$query = parse_url($web_url, PHP_URL_QUERY);
parse_str($query, $queryArray);

echo "Name: " . $queryArray['name'];  // Result: shubham
echo "EMail: " . $queryArray['email']; // Result:[email protected]

A much more secure answer that I'm surprised is not mentioned here yet:

filter_input

So in the case of the question you can use this to get an email value from the URL get parameters:

$email = filter_input( INPUT_GET, 'email', FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL );

For other types of variables, you would want to choose a different/appropriate filter such as FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING.

I suppose this answer does more than exactly what the question asks for - getting the raw data from the URL parameter. But this is a one-line shortcut that is the same result as this:

$email = $_GET['email'];
$email = filter_var( $email, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL );

Might as well get into the habit of grabbing variables this way.

PHP 8.5 (URI with parse_str)

Starting from PHP 8.5, a new URI Extension will be introduced, the existing parse_url() function is still available but may be deprecated in the future.

• https://www.php.net/releases/8.5/en.php#new-uri-extension
• https://thephp.foundation/blog/2025/10/10/php-85-uri-extension
• https://wiki.php.net/rfc/url_parsing_api

use Uri\Rfc3986\Uri;

// https://example.com/en.php?abc=abc
// NOTE: I replaced the letter "a" with the ASCII code "%61"
//       to better illustrate the difference
//       between getRawQuery and getQuery
$uri = new Uri('https://example.com/en.php?%61bc=%61bc');

$query = $uri->getQuery();
var_dump($query);
// string(7) "abc=abc"

if ($query !== null) {
  parse_str($query, $params);
  var_dump($params);
  // array(1) {
  //   ["abc"] => string(3) "abc"
  // }
}

getRawQuery returns the raw query (%61bc=%61bc), while getQuery converts ASCII codes into characters (abc=abc).

PHP 8.4 and older (parse_url with parse_str)

• Ruel's answer: parse_url() with parse_str()

In Laravel, I'm using:

private function getValueFromString(string $string, string $key)
{
    parse_str(parse_url($string, PHP_URL_QUERY), $result);

    return isset($result[$key]) ? $result[$key] : null;
}

A dynamic function which parses string URL and gets the value of the query parameter passed in the URL:

function getParamFromUrl($url, $paramName){
  parse_str(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY), $op); // Fetch query parameters from a string and convert to an associative array
  return array_key_exists($paramName, $op) ? $op[$paramName] : "Not Found"; // Check if the key exists in this array
}

Call the function to get a result:

echo getParamFromUrl('https://google.co.in?name=james&surname=bond', 'surname'); // "bond" will be output here

Weird that in over 11 years, nobody has posted an actually good function to do this here. So let me do it. I am not sure if the ! is_string check is actually needed, but it does not hurt.

/**
 * Retrieves the value of a specified query parameter from the given URL.
 *
 * @param string $url The URL from which to retrieve the query parameter.
 * @param string $arg_name The name of the query parameter to retrieve.
 * @return ?string The value of the specified query parameter, or null if it doesn't exist.
 */
function get_url_arg( string $url, string $arg_name ): ?string {

    $query_string = parse_url( $url, PHP_URL_QUERY );

    if ( empty( $query_string ) || ! is_string( $query_string ) ) {
        return null;
    }

    parse_str( $query_string, $query_args );

    return $query_args[ $arg_name ] ?? null;
}