Question

I’m trying to grab parts of a URL to create an embed code. I have the following URL structure:

http://www.mtv.com/videos/foster-the-people/761507/houdini.jhtml#id=1518072&vid=761507

I need to use preg_match to break the URL into a few pieces. Ideally, I want to test for the structure of the URL and get the numeric values from the URL. Ultimately, I would like an array in the following form after the preg_match:

Array (
    0 => 761507
    1 => 1518072
    2 => 761507
)

Note that “foster-the-people” and “houdini” are dynamic elements that can contain letters, numbers and “-” and will change from URL to URL.

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Try this : (UPDATED)

http:\/\/www\.mtv\.com\/videos\/.*?\/([0-9]+)\/.*?id=([0-9]+)&vid=([0-9]+)

Demo :

http://regexr.com?30qo4

---

Code :

<?php
    $subject = "http://www.mtv.com/videos/foster-the-people/761507/houdini.jhtml#id=1518072&vid=761507";
    $pattern = '/http:\/\/www\.mtv\.com\/videos\/.*?\/([0-9]+)\/.*?id=([0-9]+)&vid=([0-9]+)/';
    preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches);
    print_r($matches);

?>

Output :

Array
(
    [0] => http://www.mtv.com/videos/foster-the-people/761507/houdini.jhtml#id=1518072&vid=761507
    [1] => 761507
    [2] => 1518072
    [3] => 761507
)

---

Hint : The elements you need are $matches[1], $matches[2] and $matches[3]