How do i split $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] to get the base url?

Question

I have $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], pretend it is http://example.com/i/like/turtles.html .

What would i need to do to get just the "http://example.com" part out of the string and set into its own variable?

Answer 1

I'd use parse_url in the following way...

if ($urlParts = parse_url($myURI))
  $baseUrl = $urlParts["scheme"] . "://" . $urlParts["host"];

Answer 2

You could use a regular expression:

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) && preg_match('@^[^/]+://[^/]+@', $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], $match)) {
    var_dump($match[0]);
}

Or you could use the parse_url function.

Answer 3

You should be able to use the parse_url function to achieve that

Answer 4

print get_domain("http://www.somesite.com/somepage/id/1");
/* outputs: somesite.com */

function get_domain($url)
{
  $pieces = parse_url($url);
  $domain = isset($pieces['host']) ? $pieces['host'] : '';
  if (preg_match('/(?P<domain>[a-z0-9][a-z0-9\-]{1,63}\.[a-z\.]{2,6})$/i', $domain, $regs)) {
    return $regs['domain'];
  }
  return false;
}

Answer 5

As a sidenote, just a remark : the Referer is not always sent by the client (it can be disabled, for instance), and it can be faked.

So, don't base any critical functionnality (nor security-oriented) on it !