Get an array from URL - php

Question

I have a URL in this format:
https://www.example.com/page?=item1&item2&item3&item4&item5
I need to put each item into a variable, likes this:
$var1 = item1;
$var2 = item2;
$var3 = item3;
$var4 = item4;
$var5 = item5;
It does not actually say item1, item2 etc in the URL, their actual values are different every time.
Does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

The URL Query String / GET-Parameters
Your example URL https://www.example.com/page?=item1&item2&item3&item4&item5 is malformed. The query string starting after the question mark ? is parsed with the format:
name1=value1&name2=value2...
Your URL means:
<empty name> = item1
item2 = ''
item3 = ''
...
Empty names are ignored when PHP parses GET-parameters.
Let's assume you have an URL https://www.example.com/page?item1&item2&item3&item4&item5 instead. (Note the remove =.)
Accessing GET-Parameters
If the given URL is the one of you PHP current script, you can easily access the GET-parameter using the preinitialized global variable $_GET. Try var_dump($_GET) and you get:
array (size=5)
'item1' => string '' (length=0)
'item2' => string '' (length=0)
'item3' => string '' (length=0)
'item4' => string '' (length=0)
'item5' => string '' (length=0)
As you can see, item1...item5 are the keys of the associative array, each with an empty string '' as the default value since you did not set any by item1=the+item.
Get The Keys as Array
To get closer to your needs specified in the title of your question, you can extract the keys using array_keys:
$url_keys = array_keys($_GET);
Now you have an array like this:
array (size=5)
0 => string 'item1' (length=5)
1 => string 'item2' (length=5)
2 => string 'item3' (length=5)
3 => string 'item4' (length=5)
4 => string 'item5' (length=5)
Extracting as Variables
I do not recommend to extract any changing data structures into your variable scope. Be aware that the client could even manipulate the request sending you something you do not expect. It is hard to find variable names when you do not exactly know what you get. Prefer to operate on arrays.
However, if you really need to import the keys into your variables scope, here are the ways how you can achieve that. PHP does provide a function extract that can do that in several ways. We want to use the numeric indexes with a prefix to become the variable names:
extract(array_keys($_GET), EXTR_PREFIX_ALL, 'var');
The result will be:
$var_0 = item1,
$var_1 = item2
The zero-based numbering is due to the fact, that arrays are nubered zero-based by default, so the returned array from the function array_keys.
To get the numbering as illustrated in your question, you can also renumber the array of keys.
extract(array_combine(range(1, count($_GET)),array_keys($_GET)), EXTR_PREFIX_ALL, 'var');
If you are bothered by the underscore within the names, you can also extract the keys using dynamic variable creation in a fairly simple loop:
foreach (array_keys($_GET) as $k => $v)
${'var'. ($k+1)} = $v;
When you want global variables instead, use
foreach (array_keys($_GET) as $k => $v)
$GLOBALS['var'. ($k+1)] = $v;
Extract Keys from Arbitrary URL
If you have to analyze a URL string from somewhere, you can use the parse_url function to extract the query first and then use parse_str which parses a query in the same way as PHP does automatically with the script's URL when building the $_GET associative array on startup.
parse_str(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY), $params);
$params is now
array (size=5)
'item1' => string '' (length=0)
'item2' => string '' (length=0)
'item3' => string '' (length=0)
'item4' => string '' (length=0)
'item5' => string '' (length=0)
You can handle that in the same way as shown above with the $_GET array.

Answer 2

You could try this
$var1 = $_GET['item1'];
$var2 = $_GET['item2'];
$var3 = $_GET['item3'];
$var4 = $_GET['item4'];
$var5 = $_GET['item5'];
All your URL variables are stored in the GET array

Answer 3

I am not sure about your URL format...
However, as already answered here, you can extract each parameter (if specified by name) using $_GET['item1'] etc...
And, if there some other format or Unknown number of values, you can work over the whole URL by getting it using $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] which will give the string:
/page?=item1&item2&item3&item4&item5
then, splitting that string with seperator &, assuming every splitted substring is a value of an item in the array (?) in the URL.

Answer 4

As you say, you want to get all parameters in your URL.
Actually, $_GET is already an array that you also can use. But when you want to create your own array / variable list, that is also possible.
To do that, you can use the super global $_GET, this is an array with every URL parameter in it.
For example, I made this code for you
<?php
$return = [];
foreach($_GET as $key => $value) {
$return[$key] = $value;
}
var_dump($_GET);
var_dump($return);
?>
When I visit the page (http://example.com/temp.php?a&b), it will result in
array(2) { ["a"]=> string(0) "" ["b"]=> string(0) "" } array(2) { ["a"]=> string(0) "" ["b"]=> string(0) "" }
As you can see, this has the same data. And, because you say that the values and maybe also the keys (file.php?key=value) can be diffrent, I recommend you to use the array.
So, you can also save them in formats like JSON, to easilly save the in the database, so you can use the afterwards.
When I use json_encode on one of the arrays it gives me a string that you can use.
{"a":"","b":""}
With json_decode you can change it back to the array