How to parse a string using regex or another technique?

Question

I need to parse the id from the following string:

 https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/24k-magic/id1161503945?i=1161504024&uo=2

I need to only return the following:

id1161503945

The string always begins with https://itunes.apple.com/ and ends with ?i=#####&uo=2

I tried string and replace with wildcards but that did not work.

Kumar · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-10 03:01:45Z

1

Well, you can use this below regex. It is working. I have use preg_replace function.

$data = 'https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/24k-magic/id1161503945?i=1161504024&uo=2';
echo preg_replace("/(.*)\/(\w+)\?(.*)/","$2",$data);

Output is

id1161503945

Or You can use

 preg_match("/(\/)(\w+)(\?)/",$data,$m);

 echo $m[2];

Same output.

Hope it help you

edited Dec 10, 2016 at 3:01

answered Dec 10, 2016 at 2:56

Kumar

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Comments

cFreed · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-10 13:34:05Z

1

If it's really always the last element (before query params) in the url, then you can use this simple regex:

'/id[^?]+/'

CAUTION: as pointed by @xhienne, this works only if you're sure that another id string doesn't appear anywhere before the searched part.
If it may happen, rather use:

'/id[\d]+/'

This way, it's safe with respect to a previous id string, but the searched id must be followed by digits only.

edited Dec 10, 2016 at 13:34

answered Dec 10, 2016 at 2:20

cFreed

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8 Comments

John Denver Over a year ago

I tested it and it returns "1" withought the quotes

cFreed Over a year ago

@JohnDenver Seems that you take the "returned" value from preg_match! Assuming $url is your tested url, write preg_match('/id[^?]+/', $url, $match);. Then the expected result is in $match[0].

xhienne Over a year ago

That would rather be '/id[0-9]+/', else you are likely to match the album name, like in itunes.apple.com/us/album/id-look-good-on-you-single/…

cFreed Over a year ago

@xhienne I don't understand what you mean. [^?]+ accepts any id (even if not only digits), and stops before query params, if any.

xhienne Over a year ago

@cFreed See the URL I gave. Your regex would yield id-look-good-on-you-single/id1094054642. An iTunes id always ends with digits (after "id"). The id is the last part of the URL, after / and before a possible query. These conditions have to be included in the regex (mine is incomplete in this regard)

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