Request string without GET arguments

Question

Is there a simple way to get the requested file or directory without the GET arguments? For example, if the URL is http://example.com/directory/file.php?paramater=value I would like to return just http://example.com/directory/file.php. I was surprised that there is not a simple index in $_SERVER[]. Did I miss one?

Answer 1

Edit: @T.Todua provided a newer answer to this question using parse_url.

(please upvote that answer so it can be more visible).

Edit2: Someone has been spamming and editing about extracting scheme, so I've added that at the bottom.

parse_url solution

The simplest solution would be:

echo parse_url($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"], PHP_URL_PATH);

Parse_url is a built-in php function, who's sole purpose is to extract specific components from a url, including the PATH (everything before the first ?). As such, it is my new "best" solution to this problem.

strtok solution

Stackoverflow: How to remove the querystring and get only the url?

You can use strtok to get string before first occurence of ?

$url=strtok($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"],'?');

Performance Note: This problem can also be solved using explode.

• Explode tends to perform better for cases splitting the sring only on a single delimiter.
• Strtok tends to perform better for cases utilizing multiple delimiters.

This application of strtok to return everything in a string before the first instance of a character will perform better than any other method in PHP, though WILL leave the querystring in memory.

An aside about Scheme (http/https) and $_SERVER vars

While OP did not ask about it, I suppose it is worth mentioning: parse_url should be used to extract any specific component from the url, please see the documentation for that function:

parse_url($actual_link, PHP_URL_SCHEME); 

Of note here, is that getting the full URL from a request is not a trivial task, and has many security implications. $_SERVER variables are your friend here, but they're a fickle friend, as apache/nginx configs, php environments, and even clients, can omit or alter these variables. All of this is well out of scope for this question, but it has been thoroughly discussed:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/6768831/1589379

It is important to note that these $_SERVER variables are populated at runtime, by whichever engine is doing the execution (/var/run/php/ or /etc/php/[version]/fpm/). These variables are passed from the OS, to the webserver (apache/nginx) to the php engine, and are modified and amended at each step. The only such variables that can be relied on are REQUEST_URI (because it's required by php), and those listed in RFC 3875 (see: PHP: $_SERVER ) because they are required of webservers.

please note: spaming links to your answers across other questions is not in good taste.

Answer 2

You can use $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] to get requested path. Then, you'll need to remove the parameters...

$uri_parts = explode('?', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 2);

Then, add in the hostname and protocol.

echo 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $uri_parts[0];

You'll have to detect protocol as well, if you mix http: and https://. That I leave as an exercise for you. $_SERVER['REQUEST_SCHEME'] returns the protocol.

---

Putting it all together:

echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_SCHEME'] .'://'. $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] 
     . explode('?', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 2)[0];

...returns, for example:

http://example.com/directory/file.php

---

php.com Documentation:

• $_SERVER — Server and execution environment information
• explode — Split a string by a string
• parse_url — Parse a URL and return its components (possibly a better solution)

Answer 3

echo parse_url($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"], PHP_URL_PATH);

Answer 4

I actually think that's not the good way to parse it. It's not clean or it's a bit out of subject ...

• Explode is heavy
• Session is heavy
• PHP_SELF doesn't handle URLRewriting

I'd do something like ...

if ($pos_get = strpos($app_uri, '?')) $app_uri = substr($app_uri, 0, $pos_get);

• This detects whether there's an actual '?' (GET standard format)
• If it's ok, that cuts our variable before the '?' which's reserved for getting datas

Considering $app_uri as the URI/URL of my website.

Answer 5

Here is a solution that takes into account different ports and https:

$pageURL = (@$_SERVER['HTTPS'] == 'on') ? 'https://' : 'http://';

if ($_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] != '80')
  $pageURL .= $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].':'.$_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
else 
  $pageURL .= $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];  

Or a more basic solution that does not take other ports into account:

$pageURL = (@$_SERVER['HTTPS'] == 'on') ? 'https://' : 'http://';
$pageURL .= $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; 

Answer 6

$uri_parts = explode('?', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 2);
$request_uri = $uri_parts[0];
echo $request_uri;

Answer 7

Not everyone will find it simple, but I believe this to be the best way to go around it:

preg_match('/^[^\?]+/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $return);
$url = 'http' . ('on' === $_SERVER['HTTPS'] ? 's' : '') . '://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $return[0]

What is does is simply to go through the REQUEST_URI from the beginning of the string, then stop when it hits a "?" (which really, only should happen when you get to parameters).

Then you create the url and save it to $url:
When creating the $url... What we're doing is simply writing "http" then checking if https is being used, if it is, we also write "s", then we concatenate "://", concatenate the HTTP_HOST (the server, fx: "stackoverflow.com"), and concatenate the $return, which we found before, to that (it's an array, but we only want the first index in it... There can only ever be one index, since we're checking from the beginning of the string in the regex.).

I hope someone can use this...

PS. This has been confirmed to work while using SLIM to reroute the URL.

Answer 8

I know this is an old post but I am having the same problem and I solved it this way

$current_request = preg_replace("/\?.*$/","",$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]);

Or equivalently

$current_request = preg_replace("/\?.*/D","",$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]);

Answer 9

^{It's shocking how many of these upvoted/accepted answers are incomplete, so they don't answer the OP's question, after 7 years!}

• If you are on a page with URL like: http://example.com/directory/file.php?paramater=value

• ...and you would like to return just: http://example.com/directory/file.php

• then use:

  echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_SCHEME'].'://'.$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

Answer 10

You can use $_GET for url params, or $_POST for post params, but the $_REQUEST contains the parameters from $_GET $_POST and $_COOKIE, if you want to hide the URI parameter from the user you can convert it to a session variable like so:

<?php

session_start();
if (isset($_REQUEST['param']) && !isset($_SESSION['param'])) {

    // Store all parameters received
    $_SESSION['param'] = $_REQUEST['param'];

    // Redirect without URI parameters
    header('Location: /file.php');
    exit;
}
?>
<html>
<body>
<?php
  echo $_SESSION['param'];
?>
</body>
</html>

EDIT

use $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] to get the current file name or $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] to get the requested URI

Answer 11

Why so complicated? =)

$baseurl = 'http://mysite.com';
$url_without_get = $baseurl.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

this should really do it man ;)

Answer 12

I had the same problem when I wanted a link back to homepage. I tried this and it worked:

<a href="<?php echo $_SESSION['PHP_SELF']; ?>?">

Note the question mark at the end. I believe that tells the machine stop thinking on behalf of the coder :)