Remove slash from final string and GET - php

Question

So earlier I was using http://localhost/profile.php?username=joe but now I'm using htaccess to make the URL look nice, so this is what it now looks like http://localhost/joe. Now here's the issue, before I did this
$username = $_GET['username'];
And then use it to get the username, but now how would I do it? I've seen other posts, but they seem to use longer and more complex URLs.
I can do this
$url = 'http://localhost/joe';
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH);
And it seems to work fine, but I get a / before the actual result so I get /joe, and I want joe. I've also tried stripslashes but that didn't seem to work. So any ideas?

Answer 1

Trim the result on the left site to avoid removing or replacing slashes that are part of the actual value.
$result = ltrim($path, '/');

Answer 2

You can also use explode and array_pop.
$url = 'http://localhost/joe';
echo array_pop(explode("/", $url))

Answer 3

Use str_replace(). Like this
$url = 'http://localhost/joe';
$final = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH);
$result = str_replace('/','',$final);
echo $result;
stripslashes() works for backward slashes, not forward slashes

Answer 4

Just a substr call should also work:
$url = 'http://localhost/joe';
echo substr(parse_url($url, PHP_URL_PATH), 1); // joe

Answer 5

You can learn about placeholders in routes. Try this article
Route Parameters
Route parameters can be used to insert placeholders into your route definition. This will effectively create a pattern in which URI segments can be collected and passed to the application’s logic handler.
This might sound a little confusing, but when you see it in action everything will fall into place. Here we go...
<?php
// app/routes.php
// routes for the books section
Route::get('/books', function()
{
return 'Books index.';
});
Route::get('/books/{genre}', function($genre)
{
return "Books in the {$genre} category.";
});

Answer 6

Also there is basename()
echo basename('http://localhost/joe'); //joe

Answer 7

It's better to use this rule or mod proxy to rewrite REQUEST_URI:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}
Then you can get your parameter and remove its slashes easily with trim($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],'/').