Question

I am trying to remove the query string from a url, but I need to leave the first key/var intact. So I know what first occurrence of an ampersand is the point from which I want to discard the query string. What would the best way to do this? Below is my code, which currently just keeps appending to the query string.

<a href="<?php echo $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] ?>&sortkey=year&sortval=asc">

Answer 1

If i understood your question correctly, you want to strip out everything after 1st occurrence of ampersand. You can use something like this:

<?php
$uri = 'blah.blah.com?a=b&sortkey=year&sortval=asc';
$new_uri = preg_replace("/([^&]+)&(.*)/", "$1", $uri)
?>

The pattern:

([^&]+) : Match everything except '&'
&       : First '&'
(.*)    : Any thing after that

Is replaced by first group ($1), which is anything before first occurrence of &.