PHP code to split the URL

list($country, $city, $code) =
    explode('-', ltrim(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH), '/'));

No need for a regular expression here.

If the path contains more parts, country is going to end up with some undesired path parts.

$country = end(explode('/', $country));

You can use:

$arr = parse_url("http://localhost/test/usa-florida-1234");
print_r(explode('-', preg_replace('#^.*?/([^/]+)$#', '$1', $arr['path'])));

OUTPUT:

Array
(
    [0] => usa
    [1] => florida
    [2] => 1234
)

<?php

preg_match('|http://www.example.com/(.*)-(.*)-(.*)|', 'http://www.example.com/usa-florida-1234', $matches);

print_r($matches);


$country = $matches[1];
$city =  $matches[2];
$code = $matches[3];

UPDATE:

Each character in a regular expression is either understood to be a metacharacter with its special meaning, or a regular character with its literal meaning.

The pattern is composed of a sequence of atoms. The simplest atom is a literal, but grouping parts of the pattern to match an atom will require using ( ) as metacharacters.

When you match a pattern within parentheses, you can use any of $1, $2, ... or \1 \2 ...(depending on the matcher!) later to refer to the previously matched pattern.

in the example above:

| (pipe) - in the example above defines start and the end of the pattern

() - both meta-characters ( and ) a grouped parts of the pattern

. (dot) = meta-character; matches any single character

* (asterisk) = meta-character, quantifier; defines how often that preceding element(character or group, sub expression) is allowed to occur

Having that in mind:

(.*) resolves as a match for later reference a group made of any characters that occur zero or multiple times

And :

|http://www.example.com/(.*)-(.*)-(.*)|

Equals to match:

Any occurrence in the text of a string that contains the string http://www.example.com/ followed by any character zero or multiple times before the - character than again followed by any character zero or multiple times before - character followed by any character zero or multiple times.

You first need to obtain the path from your URL ('usa-florida-1234'). Then you need to split it by the dash char.

For the first part you can use parse_url. You'll find that it returns a string starting with an '/' also. You'll need to trim it. Next you can use explode.

$urlParts = parse_url('http://www.testdomain.com/usa-florida-1234');
$urlPath = ltrim($urlParts['path'], '/');
$addressParts = explode('-', $urlPath);
$country = $addressParts[0];
$city = $addressParts[1];
$code = $addressParts[2];

You should also check that there actually are three strings in the array that split returns. Some error checking is always good.

A better solution would be to use an MVC library where you define routes

'addressRoute' => '/{country}-{state}-{id}'

and handlers for them

function addressRoute($country, $state, $id) {
}

There are lots of discussions on this subject.

pathinfo and get the basename from the array

  <?php
    $var="http://www.testdomain.com/usa-florida-1234";
    $arr=pathinfo($var);
    echo $arr['basename'];
    $arr=explode("-",$arr['basename']);
    print_r($arr);

OUTPUT:

Array
(
    [0] => usa
    [1] => florida
    [2] => 1234
)

If all of the URLs used are to be expected in that format, you could use an explode() there.

$url = "http://www.example.com/usa-florida-1234";
$parts = explode('-', $url);
$country = $parts[0];
$city = $parts[1];
$code = $parts[2];