How to Get Parameters From a URL String in PHP

1. Use parse_url() and parse_str() Functions to Get Parameters From a URL String in PHP
2. Use $_GET Variable to Get Parameters From a URL String in PHP

This article will introduce methods to get parameters from a URL string in PHP.

• Using parse_url() function
• Using parse_str() function
• Using $_GET variable

Use parse_url() and parse_str() Functions to Get Parameters From a URL String in PHP

We can use the built-in functions parse_url() and parse_str() functions to get parameters from a URL string. These functions are used together to get the parameters. The function parse_url will divide the URL into different parameters. After that parse_string will get the required parameter.

The correct syntax to use parse_url() functions is as follows

parse_url( $url, $component);

The built-in function parse_url has two parameters. The details of its parameters are as follows

This function returns components of a URL. If our URL is not correctly formatted, the function may return False.

The correct syntax to use the parse_str() function is as follows

parse_str( $string, $result);

The built-in function parse_str has two parameters. The details of its parameters are as follows.

This function returns nothing.

The program below shows how we can use these functions to get parameters from a URL string.

<?php 
$url = "https://testurl.com/test/1234?email=abc@test.com&name=sarah";
$components = parse_url($url);
parse_str($components['query'], $results);
print_r($results); 
?> 

Output:

Array
(
    [email] => abc@test.com
    [name] => sarah
)

Now, if we want to get the email parameter only, we will do the following changes in our program:

<?php 
$url = "https://testurl.com/test/1234?email=abc@test.com&name=sarah";
$components = parse_url($url);
parse_str($components['query'], $results);
echo($results['email']); 
?> 

Output:

abc@test.com

We can also pass $component parameter to parse_url() function.

<?php 
$url = "https://testurl.com/test/1234?email=abc@test.com&name=sarah";
$components = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY);
//$component parameter is PHP_URL_QUERY
parse_str($components, $results);
print_r($results); 
?> 

Output:

Array
(
    [email] => abc@test.com
    [name] => sarah
)

Use $_GET Variable to Get Parameters From a URL String in PHP

In PHP, we can also use the $_GET variable to get parameters from a URL string. It is a superglobals variable, which means that it is available in all scopes. This variable gets the data i.e URL, from an HTML form.

Assuming that the URL from form is https://testurl.com/test/1234?email=abc@test.com&name=sarah . The program that uses this variable to get parameters from a URL string is as follows.

<?php 
echo $_GET['email'] . $_GET['name']
?> 

Output:

abc@test.com
sarah