PHP parse_url Function: Usage, Parameters, Return Values and Examples

The parse_url() function parses a URL string and returns its components as an associative array or a single component when the optional $component argument is supplied.

Signature: mixed parse_url(string $url[, int $component = -1]) Parameters: $url – the URL to be parsed; invalid characters are replaced with an underscore. $component – one of the PHP_URL_* constants (e.g., PHP_URL_SCHEME, PHP_URL_HOST, PHP_URL_PORT, PHP_URL_USER, PHP_URL_PASS, PHP_URL_PATH, PHP_URL_QUERY, PHP_URL_FRAGMENT). When PHP_URL_PORT is requested, an integer is returned; otherwise a string is returned.

Return value: If the URL is severely malformed, FALSE may be returned. Without the $component argument, an associative array is returned containing any of the following keys that were present in the URL: scheme, host, port, user, pass, path, query, fragment. When $component is specified, the function returns the corresponding string (or integer for PHP_URL_PORT) or NULL if that part does not exist.

Example 1:

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

Output:

Array
(
    [scheme] => http
    [host] => hostname
    [user] => username
    [pass] => password
    [path] => /path
    [query] => arg=value
    [fragment] => anchor
)
/path

Example 2:

<?php
$url = '//www.example.com/path?googleguy=googley';
// Before PHP 5.4.7 this would output the path "//www.example.com/path"
var_dump(parse_url($url));
?>

Output:

array(3) {
  ["host"]=> string(15) "www.example.com"
  ["path"]=> string(5) "/path"
  ["query"]=> string(17) "googleguy=googley"
}