http_build_query
rawurldecode
URL Functions
PHP Manual

# parse_url

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

parse_url — Parse a URL and return its components

### Description

mixed parse_url ( string `$url` [, int `$component` = -1 ] )

This function parses a URL and returns an associative array containing any of the various components of the URL that are present.

This function is not meant to validate the given URL, it only breaks it up into the above listed parts. Partial URLs are also accepted, parse_url() tries its best to parse them correctly.

### Parameters

`url`

  The URL to parse. Invalid characters are replaced by _.

`component`

  Specify 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` to retrieve just a specific URL component as a string .

### Return Values

On seriously malformed URLs, parse_url() may return `FALSE` and emit a `E_WARNING`. Otherwise an associative array is returned, whose components may be (at least one):

- scheme - e.g. http
- host
- port
- user
- pass
- path
- query - after the question mark ?
- fragment - after the hashmark #

If the `component` parameter is specified a string is returned instead of an array .

### Changelog

Version | Description
--- | ---
5.1.2 | Added the `component` parameter

### Examples

Example #1 A parse_url() example

`<?php
$url = 'http://username:password@hostname/path?arg=value#anchor';
print_r(parse_url($url));
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH);
?>`

The above example will output:

    Array
    (
        [scheme] => http
        [host] => hostname
        [user] => username
        [pass] => password
        [path] => /path
        [query] => arg=value
        [fragment] => anchor
    )
    /path

### Notes

> Note: This function doesn't work with relative URLs.

> Note: This function is intended specifically for the purpose of parsing URLs and not URIs. However, to comply with PHP's backwards compatibility requirements it makes an exception for the file:// scheme where triple slashes (file:///...) are allowed. For any other scheme this is invalid.

### See Also

- pathinfo() - Returns information about a file path
- parse_str() - Parses the string into variables
- http_build_query() - Generate URL-encoded query string
- http_build_url() - Build a URL
- dirname() - Returns directory name component of path
- basename() - Returns filename component of path

http_build_query
rawurldecode
URL Functions
PHP Manual