isolating part of a url with php

Question

Hi,

If I have the following url:

http://URL/products/38/293/bannana_cake/

or

htp://URL/products/38/293/fruit_cake/

How can I isolate just bannana_cake and fruit_cake from the examples above?

Answer 1

it will be a $_GET variable as what you're looking at is just a mod_rewrite version of a query string

try this to see what the variable name is:

<pre>
<?php print_r($_GET);?>
</pre>

Answer 2

<?php
$url = 'http://username:password@hostname/path?arg=value#anchor';    
print_r(parse_url($url));    
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH);
?>

And then use explode() on the 'path' element. For example:

<?php
$url = 'http://URL/products/38/293/bannana%5Fcake/';
$a = parse_url($url);
$p = explode('/', $a['path']);
echo $p[4];
?>

Answer 3

You can see the URL that has been requested by looking at the $_SERVER[] array (Google that to find the exact entry). They you can split the string into an array on '/', then the [3] index will be the part of the URL you're interested in.

Answer 4

Split the url on the slashes and retrieve the last part:

$parts = explode('/', $url);
echo $parts[sizeof($parts) - 2];

Only problem, you need to have the trailing slash in the url. You could make a check for that like this:

$parts = explode('/', $url);
echo ($parts[sizeof($parts) - 1])
    ? $parts[sizeof($parts) - 1]
    : $parts[sizeof($parts) - 2];

Answer 5

Probably the easiest way, which only applies to your special case and is not something for production, is to use the basename-function:

<?php
echo basename("http://url/products/38/293/banana_cake/"); // Produces "banana_cake"
?>

This only works because "banana_cake" is the last part of the url and there is nothing behind the last slash.

It is definately not a desirable solution and Luca Matteis' answer will get my vote, because the slightest change in the query string order will break things.

Answer 6

My answer will be slightly longer. It looks like you want to do something similar to using URI Templates, so here's a snippet of two functions from a class (called xs_Breakdown) I have that does these things. It could easily be extended to include wildcards and conditional behaviour (on the todo list for a time in the future I'm suffering from too little to do). First, and example of setting up and use ;

   $br = new xs_Breakdown ( '{first}/{second}/{third}/{fourth}/{fifth}/{andsoon}' ) ;

   // Pick out the template variable called 'third'
   $third = $br->third ;

The code (just the basics which should be enough to kick up some of your own dust; all the code would be too long to post here. Pop me a message if you'd like the whole shebang with three nested property / Java Bean-like classes) ;

// Static variable to hold our tokens
$_tokens = null ;

// Input path (set in constructor)
$_path = null ;

// Results here
$values = array() ;

function parse ( $schema = '' ) {

      // Sanitize input data : Regular Expression
      $regexp = '/[^a-z0-9 +\-\/!$*_=|.:]/i' ;

      // Break our path into little bits
      $break = explode ( '/', $this->_path ) ;

      // Find the tokens used from our schema template
      $this->_tokens = $this->getSubStrs ( "{","}", $schema ) ;

      // Loop through the path elements
      foreach ( $break as $key => $value ) {

       // Sanitize the value of the element
       $value = urldecode ( trim ( preg_replace ( $regexp, '', $value ) ) ) ;

       // Element not blank? (Meaning, real text)
          if ( $value != '' )

           // Index it!
           @$this->values[$this->_tokens[$key]] = $value ;

         }

     }

     function getSubStrs ( $from, $to, $str, &$result = array () ) {

      if ( strpos ( $str, $from ) !== false ) {

       $start = strpos ( $str, $from ) + 1 ;
       $end = strpos ( $str, $to ) - 1 ;

       $item = substr ( $str, $start, $end - $start + 1 ) ;
       $rest = substr ( $str, $end + 2 ) ;

       $result[] = $item ;

       $this->getSubStrs ( $from, $to, $rest, $result ) ;

      }

      return $result ;
     }