Get URL query string parameters

Question

What is the "less code needed" way to get parameters from a URL query string which is formatted like the following?

www.mysite.com/category/subcategory?myqueryhash

Output should be: myqueryhash

I am aware of this approach:

www.mysite.com/category/subcategory?q=myquery

<?php
   echo $_GET['q'];  //Output: myquery
?>

Solution 1

$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] contains the data that you are looking for.

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DOCUMENTATION

• php.net: $_SERVER - Manual

Solution 2

The PHP way to do it is using the function parse_url, which parses a URL and return its components. Including the query string.

Example:

$url = 'www.mysite.com/category/subcategory?myqueryhash';
echo parse_url($url, PHP_URL_QUERY); # output "myqueryhash"

Full documentation here

Solution 3

The function parse_str() automatically reads all query parameters into an array.

For example, if the URL is http://www.example.com/page.php?x=100&y=200, the code

$queries = array();
parse_str($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'], $queries);

will store parameters into the $queries array ($queries['x']=100, $queries['y']=200).

Look at documentation of parse_str

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EDIT

According to the PHP documentation, parse_str() should only be used with a second parameter. Using parse_str($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']) on this URL will create variables $x and $y, which makes the code vulnerable to attacks such as http://www.example.com/page.php?authenticated=1.

Solution 4

If you want the whole query string:

$_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"]

Solution 5

I will recommend the best answer as:

<?php
    echo 'Hello ' . htmlspecialchars($_GET["name"]) . '!';
?>

Assuming the user entered http://example.com/?name=Hannes

The above example will output:

Hello Hannes!

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