How to remove substring that may appear within a string?

Question

I need to simplify url strings for some reporting, and sometimes our url strings have gclid params baked into them at different parts:

https://www.website.com/colors/blue?src=camp_id1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoInnBRDDARIsANBVyASfVUCg4ShKaAq4q8cX6xgB4kYj-oRGEPuO5UuUaAnZi2zD7yQU684aAo3KEALw_wcB

or

https://www.website.com/colors/blue?gclid=Cj0KCQjwoInnBRDDARIsANBVyASfVUCg4ShKaAq4q8cX6xgB4kYj-oRGEPuO5UuUaAnZi2zD7yQU684aAo3KEALw_wcB&src=camp_id1

or

https://www.website.com/colors/blue?page=2&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoInnBRDDARIsANBVyASfVUCg4ShKaAq4q8cX6xgB4kYj-oRGEPuO5UuUaAnZi2zD7yQU684aAo3KEALw_wcB&src=camp_id1

or

https://www.website.com/colors/blue?page=2&src=camp_id1

So there are all these variations of the URL. Sometimes they contain the gclid and sometimes they don't. They're often at different parts in the url.

What's the easiest way in ruby to print the string without the gclid substring if it's there?

Marlin Pierce · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-20 15:56:16Z

3

.sub(/[\?&]gclid=[^&]*/, '')

answered May 20, 2019 at 15:56

Marlin Pierce

10.1k5 gold badges33 silver badges56 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

Cary Swoveland Over a year ago

It's not necessary to escape a question mark within a character class.

Cary Swoveland Over a year ago

Keep in mind that, from an educational point of view, you are instructing readers (who don't read comments :-)) that a question mark within a character class must be escaped.

NM Pennypacker · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-20 15:58:48Z

1

If all you need is the base URL you can do:

url = your_url_string
trimmed_url = url[0, url.index("?")]

Or you can guard against strings without query params:

url = your_url_string
trimmed_url = url[0, (url.include?('?') ? url.index("?") : url)]

There may be a way to do it with URI as well...

If all you need to do is remove that parameter, see this answer: Rails String Replace URL Parameters

edited May 20, 2019 at 15:58

answered May 20, 2019 at 15:30

NM Pennypacker

6,99211 gold badges38 silver badges41 bronze badges

1 Comment

Alex Over a year ago

I need to keep the other params, but just get rid of the gclid.

engineersmnky · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-20 17:47:54Z

I would recommend using the URI library for this instead so you can just parse the query portion:

uris = ["https://www.website.com/colors/blue?src=camp_id1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoInnBRDDARIsANBVyASfVUCg4ShKaAq4q8cX6xgB4kYj-oRGEPuO5UuUaAnZi2zD7yQU684aAo3KEALw_wcB",
"https://www.website.com/colors/blue?gclid=Cj0KCQjwoInnBRDDARIsANBVyASfVUCg4ShKaAq4q8cX6xgB4kYj-oRGEPuO5UuUaAnZi2zD7yQU684aAo3KEALw_wcB&src=camp_id1",
"https://www.website.com/colors/blue?page=2&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoInnBRDDARIsANBVyASfVUCg4ShKaAq4q8cX6xgB4kYj-oRGEPuO5UuUaAnZi2zD7yQU684aAo3KEALw_wcB&src=camp_id1",
"https://www.website.com/colors/blue?page=2&src=camp_id1"
]

uris.map do |s| 
  uri = URI.parse(s)
  query_params = uri.query.scan(/\w+(?==)[^&]*/).reject{|s| s.start_with?('gclid')}
  uri.query = query_params.empty? ? nil : query_params.join('&')
  uri.to_s
end

# => ["https://www.website.com/colors/blue?src=camp_id1", 
#     "https://www.website.com/colors/blue?src=camp_id1", 
#     "https://www.website.com/colors/blue?page=2&src=camp_id1",  
#     "https://www.website.com/colors/blue?page=2&src=camp_id1"]

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to remove substring that may appear within a string?

3 Answers 3

2 Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

2 Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related