How do I extract query parameters from a URL string in PHP?

Solution 1:

You can use parse_url and parse_str like this:

$query = parse_url('http://www.example.com?test=123&random=abc', PHP_URL_QUERY);
parse_str($query, $params);
$test = $params['test'];

parse_url allows to split an URL in different parts (scheme, host, path, query, etc); here we use it to get only the query (test=123&random=abc). Then we can parse the query with parse_str.

Solution 2:

I needed to check an url that was relative for our system so I couldn't use parse_str. For anyone who needs it:

$urlParts = null;
preg_match_all("~[\?&]([^&]+)=([^&]+)~", $url, $urlParts);

Solution 3:

the hostname is optional but is required at least the question mark at the begin of parameter string:

$inputString = '?test=123&random=abc&usersList[]=1&usersList[]=2' ;

parse_str ( parse_url ( $inputString , PHP_URL_QUERY ) , $params );

print_r ( $params );