How to Parse URLs with php parse_url() Function

To parse a URL in php, you can use the php parse_url() function and get an array with the URL scheme, host, path, query string, and other information.

$url = "http://theprogrammingexpert.com/php-parse-url?user=friend#hello";

print_r(parse_url($url));

//Output:
Array
(
    [scheme] => https
    [host] => theprogrammingexpert.com
    [path] => /php-parse-url
    [query] => user=friend
    [fragment] => hello
)

If you want to only get a specific piece of information about a URL, you can pass a value to the optional ‘component’ parameter.

$url = "http://theprogrammingexpert.com/php-parse-url?user=friend#hello";

echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_SCHEME) . "\n";
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST) . "\n";
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH) . "\n";
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY) . "\n";
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_FRAGMENT) . "\n";

//Output:
https
theprogrammingexpert.com
/php-parse-url
user=friend
hello

When working with URLs in our programs, the ability to parse a URL and extract information about the URL is valuable.

In php, the parse_url() function allows us to easily extract information about a given URL.

We can use parse_url() to parse URLs and get information about the URL scheme, host, port, path, query and fragment.

Below is a simple example of how to use parse_url() to parse a URL in php.

$url = "http://theprogrammingexpert.com/php-parse-url?user=friend#hello";

print_r(parse_url($url));

//Output:
Array
(
    [scheme] => https
    [host] => theprogrammingexpert.com
    [path] => /php-parse-url
    [query] => user=friend
    [fragment] => hello
)

Getting a Specific URL Component with parse_url() in php

With parse_url(), you can get a specific component of a URL by passing a value to the optional ‘component’ parameter of parse_url().

If the component you are looking for exists, parse_url() will return a string. If the component doesn’t exist, parse_url() will return NULL.

Below are a few examples of how to get specific components from a URL in php.

$url = "http://theprogrammingexpert.com/php-parse-url?user=friend#hello";

echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_SCHEME) . "\n";
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST) . "\n";
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH) . "\n";
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY) . "\n";
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_FRAGMENT) . "\n";

//Output:
https
theprogrammingexpert.com
/php-parse-url
user=friend
hello

Hopefully this article has been useful for you to learn how to parse a URL with the php parse_url() function.