Question

Just writing a little function here and need some optimisation help!

All requests redirect to the index page,

I have this function that parses a url into an array.

The type of url is depicted as:

http://localhost/{user}/{page}/?sub_page={sub_page}&action={action}

So an example would be:

http://localhost/admin/stock/?sub_page=products&action=add

When requesting the uri the domain is excluded so my function accepts strings like so:

/admin/stock/?sub_page=products&action=add

My function is as follows and WARNING it’s very procedural.

for those of you that cannot be bothered to read and understand it, ive added an explaination at the bottom 😉

function uri_to_array($uri){
    // uri will be in format: /{user}/{page}/?sub_page={subpage}&action={action} ... && plus additional parameters

    // define array that will be returned
    $return_uri_array = array();

    // separate path from querystring;
    $array_tmp_uri = explode("?", $uri);

    // if explode returns the same as input $string, no delimeter was found
    if ($uri == $array_tmp_uri[0]){ 

        // no question mark found.
        // format either '/{user}/{page}/' or '/{user}/'
        $uri = trim($array_tmp_uri[0], "/");

        // remove excess baggage
        unset ($array_tmp_uri);

        // format either '{user}/{page}' or '{user}'
        $array_uri = explode("/", $uri);

        // if explode returns the same as input $string, no delimiter was found
        if ($uri == $array_uri[0]){
            // no {page} defined, just user.
            $return_uri_array["user"] = $array_uri[0];
        }
        else{
            // {user} and {page} defined.
            $return_uri_array["user"] = $array_uri[0];
            $return_uri_array["page"] = $array_uri[1];            
        }
    }
    else{

        // query string is defined
        // format either '/{user}/{page}/' or '/{user}/'
        $uri = trim($array_tmp_uri[0], "/");
        $parameters = trim($array_tmp_uri[1]);

        // PARSE PATH
        // remove excess baggage
        unset ($array_tmp_uri);

        // format either '{user}/{page}' or '{user}'
        $array_uri = explode("/", $uri);

        // if explode returns the same as input $string, no delimiter was found
        if ($uri == $array_uri[0]){
            // no {page} defined, just user.
            $return_uri_array["user"] = $array_uri[0];
        }
        else{
            // {user} and {page} defined.
            $return_uri_array["user"] = $array_uri[0];
            $return_uri_array["page"] = $array_uri[1];            
        }

        // parse parameter string
        $parameter_array = array();
        parse_str($parameters, $parameter_array);

        // copy parameter array into return array
        foreach ($parameter_array as $key => $value){
            $return_uri_array[$key] = $value;
        }
    }
    return $return_uri_array;
}

basically there is one main if statement, one path is if no querystring is defined (no ‘?’) and the other path is if the ‘?’ does exist.

I’m just looking to make this function better.

Would it be worth making it a class?

Essentially i need a function that takes /{user}/{page}/?sub_page={sub_page}&action={action} as an argument and returns

array(
    "user" => {user},
    "page" => {page},
    "sub_page" => {sub_page},
    "action" => {action}
)

Cheers, Alex

Answer 1

If you want to

• Do it properly
• Use a regular expression
• Use the same method to parse all URL:s (parse_url() does not support relative paths, called only_path below)

This might suite your taste:

$url = 'http://localhost/admin/stock/?sub_page=products&action=add';
preg_match ("!^((?P<scheme>[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z\d+-.]*):)?(((//(((?P<credentials>([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=%]*)(:([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:%]*))?)@)?(?P<host>([\w\d-.%]+)|(\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})|(\[([a-fA-F\d.:]+)\]))?(:(?P<port>\d*))?))(?<path>(/[a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]*)*))|(?P<only_path>(/(([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]+(/[a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]*)*))?)|([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]+(/[a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]*)*)))?(?P<query>\?([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%/?]*))?(?P<fragment>#([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%/?]*))?$!u", $url, $matches);
$parts = array_intersect_key ($matches, array ('scheme' => '', 'credentials' => '', 'host' => '', 'port' => '', 'path' => '', 'query' => '', 'fragment' => '', 'only_path' => '', ));
var_dump ($parts);

It should cover just about all possible well-formed URL:s

If host is empty, only_path should hold the path, that is protocol-less and host-less URL.

UPDATE:

Maybe I should read the question a bit better. This will parse the URL into components that you can use to more easily get the parts you’re really interested in. Run something like:

// split the URL
preg_match ('!^((?P<scheme>[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z\d+-.]*):)?(((//(((?P<credentials>([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=%]*)(:([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:%]*))?)@)?(?P<host>([\w\d-.%]+)|(\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})|(\[([a-fA-F\d.:]+)\]))?(:(?P<port>\d*))?))(?<path>(/[a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]*)*))|(?P<only_path>(/(([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]+(/[a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]*)*))?)|([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]+(/[a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%]*)*)))?(\?(?P<query>([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%/?]*)))?(#(?P<fragment>([a-zA-Z\d\-._~\!$&'()*+,;=:@%/?]*)))?$!u', $url, $matches);
$parts = array_intersect_key ($matches, array ('scheme' => '', 'credentials' => '', 'host' => '', 'port' => '', 'path' => '', 'query' => '', 'fragment' => '', 'only_path' => '', ));

// extract the user and page
preg_match ('!/*(?P<user>.*)/(?P<page>.*)/!u', $parts['path'], $matches);
$user_and_page = array_intersect_key ($matches, array ('user' => '', 'page' => '', ));

// the query string stuff
$query = array ();
parse_str ($parts['query'], $query);

References:

Just to clarify, here are the relevant documents used to formulate the regular expression:

1. RFC3986 scheme/protocol
2. RFC3986 user and password
3. RFC1035 hostname
   • Or RFC3986 IPv4
   • Or RFC2732 IPv6
4. RFC3986 query
5. RFC3986 fragment