Question

Is there a way in php to do a preg_match on a url like below

dynamic/dynamic/dev/new_mobile/lib

and it would only pull out dev/new_mobile, and the link also has the ability to be like this too

dynamic/dynamic/dynamic/tst/new_mobile/lib

In the above example it would only pull out tst/new_mobile. The key is it would grab the last two directories before lib. Any idea how this could be done?

Answer 1

Here’s a regex that will get the part you want:

$url = 'dynamic/tst/new_mobile/lib/foo/bar';

if (preg_match('#^(?:.*?/)?([^/]+/[^/]+)/lib(?:/.+)?$#', $url, $matches)) {
    $part = $matches[1];
    var_dump($part); // "tst/new_mobile"
}

This will get the 2 directories before the lib directory allowing for any directories before and after. It will also match a couple of edge cases that you don’t mention whether you need:

tst/new_mobile/lib/foo/bar
/tst/new_mobile/lib/foo/bar