Extract url from string (no regex)

Question

I have a string which contains a url. I am trying to extract the url from the additional text in the most efficient way. So far I have been using explode but I have to explode twice and then rebuild the url. Regex is not something I dominate yet so i placed it out of the question(unless it is the best solution). Is there a way to extract the url in one step?

$url = "/url?q=http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778&sa=U&ei=EhHLVL_yJcb-yQSZ7oDgAg&ved=0CBMQFjAA&usg";
$strip1  = explode( '&', $url );
$strip2  = explode('=', $strip1[0]);
$result =  $strip2[1].'='.$strip2[2];

result:

http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778

Priyank · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-30 05:49:28Z

1

Try like this:use preg_split()

$date = "/url?q=http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778&sa=U&ei=EhHLVL_yJcb-yQSZ7oDgAg&ved=0CBMQFjAA&usg";
$t =preg_split("/[=&]/",  $date);
echo $t[1]."=".$t[2]; //output: http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id1545778

edited Jan 30, 2015 at 5:49

answered Jan 30, 2015 at 5:28

Priyank

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4 Comments

Priyank Over a year ago

@MaryCoding this may help you :)

MaryCoding Over a year ago

unfortunately split is deprecated.

MaryCoding Over a year ago

thanks, this works perfect as is simple and doesn't involve regex

Alexander O'Mara Over a year ago

@MaryCoding This is actually using a regex. /[=&]/ is a regular expression.

Abhilash Cherukat · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-30 05:32:28Z

0

$strip1  = explode( '/url?q=', $url );

Use this regex $strip1

^((http):\/)?\/?([^:\/\s]+)((\/\w+)*\/)([\w\-\.]+[^#?\s]+)(.*)?(#[\w\-]+)?$

you will get an array of sections in the url

answered Jan 30, 2015 at 5:32

Abhilash Cherukat

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Alexander O'Mara · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-30 05:34:08Z

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Ugly one-step regex-free solution.

$url = "/url?q=http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778&sa=U&ei=EhHLVL_yJcb-yQSZ7oDgAg&ved=0CBMQFjAA&usg";
$result = substr( $url, strpos( $url, '=' ) + 1, strpos( $url, '&' ) - strpos( $url, '=' ) - 1 );
echo $result;

And cleaner two-step variation.

$url = "/url?q=http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778&sa=U&ei=EhHLVL_yJcb-yQSZ7oDgAg&ved=0CBMQFjAA&usg";
$start = strpos( $url, '=' ) + 1;
$result = substr( $url, $start, strpos( $url, '&' ) - $start );
echo $result;

Somewhat less-ugly regex solution.

$url = "/url?q=http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778&sa=U&ei=EhHLVL_yJcb-yQSZ7oDgAg&ved=0CBMQFjAA&usg";
$result = preg_replace( '/[^=]*=([^&]*).*/', '${1}', $url );
echo $result;

Both produce the following output.

http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778

answered Jan 30, 2015 at 5:34

Alexander O'Mara

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1 Comment

MaryCoding Over a year ago

Looks like the regex by far seems to be cleaner than the other ways

Ryan Pendleton · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-30 05:35:30Z

0

Technically, that second ? in the URL should be URL encoded, but we can get around that. Use parse_url to get the query, then replace ? with a URL encoded version using str_replace. After this, you will have a valid query that you can parse using parse_str.

$query = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY);
$query = str_replace("?", urlencode("?"), $query);
parse_str($query, $params);
echo $params['q'];

// displays http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778

answered Jan 30, 2015 at 5:35

Ryan Pendleton

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Raj · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-30 06:19:02Z

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$url = "/url?q=http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778&sa=U&ei=EhHLVL_yJcb-yQSZ7oDgAg&ved=0CBMQFjAA&usg";

$strip3  = current(explode('&',end(explode('=', $url,2))));
print_r ($strip3);    //output  http://www.somesite.com/sites/pages/page?id=1545778

edited Jan 30, 2015 at 6:19

answered Jan 30, 2015 at 6:00

Raj

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1 Comment

Raj Over a year ago

try this one using explode.

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Ugly one-step regex-free solution.

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