How to use the PHP parse_url() Function, With Examples

The PHP parse_url() function processes a given URL and divides it into its individual components.  Here’s how to use it.

parse_url() is often used to get the host/domain name from a given URL or the path to a remote host file.

Syntax for parse_url()

parse_url ( $url , $component )

Note that:

• $url is the URL (e.g., https://www.linuxscrew.com) which you want to parse
  • Relative URLs may not be parsed correctly
• $component is optional and can be one of:
  • PHP_URL_SCHEME, PHP_URL_HOST, PHP_URL_PORT, PHP_URL_USER, PHP_URL_PASS, PHP_URL_PATH, PHP_URL_QUERY or PHP_URL_FRAGMENT
  • …if you wish to retrieve only one component from the parsed URL
• parse_url() returns one of three values
  • FALSE if it is passed a seriously malformed or mistyped URL
  • An associative array with values from the below components table
  • Or, if the $component is specified, the value of that component (or null if it is not present) – will be a String variable unless you are requesting PHP_URL_PORT, which will be an integer

Note that parse_url() is not intended to handle URIs – just URLs. The terms are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.

Examples

Here’s a URL that contains all of the components listed above and the result of running parse_url() on it:

$url = 'https://username:password@hostname:8080/path/to/file?argument=value#anchor';

var_dump(parse_url($url));
var_dump(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_SCHEME));
var_dump(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_USER));
var_dump(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PASS));
var_dump(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST));
var_dump(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PORT));
var_dump(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH));
var_dump(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY));
var_dump(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_FRAGMENT));

The PHP var_dump() function is used to output the returned array’s details, followed by each component parsed individually.

The above code will output:

array(8) {
    ["scheme"]=>
    string(4) "https"
    ["host"]=>
    string(8) "hostname"
    ["port"]=>
    int(8080)
    ["user"]=>
    string(8) "username"
    ["pass"]=>
    string(8) "password"
    ["path"]=>
    string(5) "/path/to/file"
    ["query"]=>
    string(9) "argument=value"
    ["fragment"]=>
    string(6) "anchor"
}
string(4) "https"
string(8) "username"
string(8) "password"
string(8) "hostname"
int(8080)
string(5) "/path/to/file"
string(9) "argument=value"
string(6) "anchor"

For more parse_url examples, check out the official PHP documentation.

For more PHP explainers, check out our other PHP articles.