Using regex to get string from URL?

Question

Regex is my bete noire, can anyone help me isolate a string from a URL?

I want to get the page name from a URL which could appear in any of the following ways from an input form:

https://www.facebook.com/PAGENAME?sk=wall&filter=2
http://www.facebook.com/PAGENAME?sk=wall&filter=2
www.facebook.com/PAGENAME
facebook.com/PAGENAME?sk=wall

... and so on.

I can't seem to find a way to isolate the string after .com/ but before ? (if present at all). Is it preg_match, replace or split?

If anyone can recommend a particularly clear and introductory regex guide they found useful, it'd be appreciated.

mck89 · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-30 10:22:47Z

5

You can use the parse_url function and then get the last segment from the path of the url:

$parts=parse_url($url);
$path_parts=explode("/", $parts["path"]);
$page=$path_parts[count($path_parts)-1];

answered Jun 30, 2011 at 10:22

mck89

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4 Comments

Joe W Over a year ago

Typical. You don't know a PHP function exists until you needed it an hour before.

RReverser Over a year ago

Will be better to use in-built parameters as I wrote below.

mck89 Over a year ago

@RReverser Your solution works only if the path is "/pagename", but if it's "/path/to/pagename" it will return the wrong result

RReverser Over a year ago

Don't agree. substr(parse_url('https://www.facebook.com/path/to/pagename?sk=wall&filter=2', PHP_URL_PATH), 1) returns path/to/pagename as is expected. As I understood, author needs all the pathname and not only last part.

Sven Koschnicke · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-30 10:26:05Z

2

For learning and testing regexes I found RegExr, an online tool, very useful: http://gskinner.com/RegExr/

But as others mentioned, parsing the url with appropriate functions might be better in this case.

answered Jun 30, 2011 at 10:26

Sven Koschnicke

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1 Comment

kapa Over a year ago

Would have been a great comment.

Sukumar · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-30 10:23:10Z

1

I think you can use this php function (parse_url) directly instead of using regex.

answered Jun 30, 2011 at 10:23

Sukumar

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1 Comment

Sukumar Over a year ago

Damn, beat me to it by 20 seconds! Good going :)

RReverser · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-30 10:30:51Z

0

Use smth like:

substr(parse_url('https://www.facebook.com/PAGENAME?sk=wall&filter=2', PHP_URL_PATH), 1);

answered Jun 30, 2011 at 10:30

RReverser

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