How do I remove http, https and slash from user input in php

Question

Example user input

http://domain.com/
http://domain.com/topic/
http://domain.com/topic/cars/
http://www.domain.com/topic/questions/

I want

Answer 1

I'd suggest using the tools PHP gave you, have a look at parse_url.

<?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

It sounds like you're after at least host + path (add others as needed, e.g. query):

$parsed = parse_url('http://www.domain.com/topic/questions/');

echo $parsed['host'], $parsed['path'];

    > www.domain.com/topic/questions/

Cheers

Answer 2

ereg_replace is now deprecated, so it is better to use:

$url = preg_replace("(^https?://)", "", $url );

This removes either http:// or https://

Answer 3

<?php
// user input
$url = 'http://www.example.com/category/website/wordpress/wordpress-security/';
$url0 = 'http://www.example.com/';
$url1 = 'http://www.example.com/category/';
$url2 = 'http://www.example.com/category/website/';
$url3 = 'http://www.example.com/category/website/wordpress/';

// print_r(parse_url($url));
// echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH);

$removeprotocols = array('http://', 'https://');

echo '<br>' . str_replace($removeprotocols,"",$url0);
echo '<br>' . str_replace($removeprotocols,"",$url1);
echo '<br>' . str_replace($removeprotocols,"",$url2);
echo '<br>' . str_replace($removeprotocols,"",$url3);

?>

Answer 4

Wow. I came here from google expecting to find a one liner to copy and paste!

You don't need a function to do this because one already exists. Just do:

echo explode("//", "https://anyurl.any.tld/any/directory/structure", 2)[1];

In this example, explode() will return an array of:

["https:", "anyurl.any.tld/any/directory/structure"]

And we want the 2nd element. This will handle http, https, ftp, or pretty much any URI, without needing regex.

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php

If you want a function:

function removeProtocols($uri) { return explode("//", $uri, 2)[1]; }

EDIT: See user comment from Harry Lewis... this is my favourite way to do this now.