Handling URLs correctly with PHP - php

Question

i have the following case within my plugin for wordpress: I have a details page of a database entry which can be accessed like this:
http://localhost:8888/studio/wp-admin/admin.php?page=myplugin-details&id=42
The next would be to add sorting options to this page and i solved it with this code:
The url would be:
http://localhost:8888/studio/wp-admin/admin.php?page=myplugin-details&id=42&orderby=answer&order=asc
<?php
if (!empty($_GET['orderby'])) {
$pos = strpos($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"], 'orderby');
$url = substr($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"], 0, $pos-1);
if ($_GET['order'] == 'desc') {
echo '<th class="sortable desc">';
echo '<a href="'.$url.'&orderby=answer&order=asc">';
} else {
echo '<th class="sortable asc">';
echo '<a href="'.$url.'&orderby=answer&order=desc">';
}
} else {
echo '<th class="sortable desc">';
echo '<a href="'.$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"].'&orderby=answer&order=asc">';
}
?>
This works fine, but do i have to do that URL/REQUEST_URI stuff or is there a solution which is much simpler?
Thanks!

Answer 1

In my opinion you should not use strpos to extract the URL. Things could get funky if you made changes to your code later on. You could use str_replace instead :
if ($_GET['order'] == 'desc') {
echo '<th class="sortable desc">';
echo '<a href="'.str_replace("order=desc", "order=asc", $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]).'">';
} else {
echo '<th class="sortable asc">';
echo '<a href="'.str_replace("order=asc", "order=desc",$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]).'">';
}