Encoding $_GET variable URL ignores ampersand "&" character - php

Question

So im trying to get an url from the address bar that looks like this:
http://mysite.com/url.php?name=http://test.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3&secure=false
I'm using the $_GET variable to read it right off the URL my code is as follows
$arc = rawurlencode($_GET['name']);
echo "URL: $arc";
This only returns
URL: http://imgur.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3
It 's missing the &secure=false
What i want it to look:
URL: http://test.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3&secure=false
I have tried urlencode, rawurlencode with no avail, i have looked in google a number of forums and stackoverflow none of the answer help, any ideas? Thanks!
urlencode shows this:
URL: http%3A%2F%2Ftest.com
so i cant have that either!

Answer 1

You'll need to urlencode() before constructing the URL, ie:
$url = "http://mysite.com/url.php?name=".urlencode('http://test.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3&secure=false');
This way, you will be able obtain the full URL as a name GET parameter from $_GET['name'].
Explanation:
Without urlencode() it when constructing the URL, PHP would treat is as 2 separate parameters, separated by &:
$_GET['name']
which is http://imgur.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3 for your case
$_GET['secure']
which is false for your case
Alternatively:
From your comment, it seems that you do not have control for the URL construction. You can get the full $_GET in a single string using http_build_query:
$name = http_build_query($_GET);
You would then obtain:
echo $name; // name=http://test.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3&secure=false
// which you would then may want to strip away the first 'name='
$name = substr($name, strlen('name='));
echo $name; // to obtain http://test.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3&secure=false

Answer 2

The original URL, http://mysite.com/url.php?name=http://test.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3&secure=false, contains two query-string parameters: name and secure. The & in the query-string belongs to the full URL, not the URL in the name parameter.
If you have control over this value, when declaring the link/URL, use PHP's urlencode() to encode the full name value, such as:
$url = "http://mysite.com/url.php?name=" . urlencode("=http://test.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3&secure=false");
This will properly encode the name parameter and your $arc = $_GET['name']; will work as desired.
If you do not have control over setting the value and are simply parsing something you're receiving, you can split the given string on the name= parameter and assume everything else after it is part of name:
$splitQuery = split('name=', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$arc = $splitQuery[1];
To decode the encoded URL, after you've accessed it, use PHP's urldecode():
$arc = urldecode($_GET['name']); // assuming you're properly encoding the `name` parameter

Answer 3

If you cannot encode the URL, you can get the current URI with this code:
$url = $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
that in your case, the $url is :
/url.php?name=http://test.com/format.jsp?id=738ths3&secure=false
Then you can split it with explode and validate it and take the GET params from it.