Request URI parser

Question

function parse_request_uri() {
    $parts = [];

    if (array_key_exists('REQUEST_URI', $_SERVER)) {
        $request_path = explode('?', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);

        $parts['base'] = rtrim(dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), '\/');
        $parts['path'] = substr(urldecode($request_path[0]), strlen($parts['base']) + 1);

        if ($parts['path'] === basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])) {
            $parts['path'] = '/';
        } elseif ($parts['path'] === false) {
            $parts['path'] = '/';
        }

        $parts['path_parts'] = [];

        if ($parts['path'] !== '/') {
            $parts['path_parts'] = explode('/', $parts['path']);
        }

        if (isset($request_path[1])) {
            $parts['query_string'] = urldecode($request_path[1]);
            parse_str($parts['query_string'], $parts['query_vars']);
        }
    }

    return $parts;
}

Ideas?

Using following .htaccess:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

Examples:

URI Request: http://url/hello/world?hello=world

Results:

array(5) { 
  ["base"]=> string(0) "" 
  ["path"]=> string(11) "hello/world" 
  ["path_parts"]=> array(2) { 
    [0]=> string(5) "hello" 
    [1]=> string(5) "world" 
  } 
  ["query_string"]=> string(11) "hello=world" 
  ["query_vars"]=> array(1) { 
    ["hello"]=> string(5) "world" 
  } 
}

URI Request: http://url/index.php/hello/world?hello=world

Results:

array(5) { 
  ["base"]=> string(0) "" 
  ["path"]=> string(21) "index.php/hello/world" 
  ["path_parts"]=> array(3) { 
    [0]=> string(9) "index.php" 
    [1]=> string(5) "hello" [2]=> string(5) "world" 
  } 
  ["query_string"]=> string(11) "hello=world" 
  ["query_vars"]=> array(1) { 
    ["hello"]=> string(5) "world" 
  } 
}

Not sure if index.php actually should show up there as it is the file name the function is called in?

URI Request: http://url/index.php/hello/world/?hello=world

Results:

array(5) { 
  ["base"]=> string(0) "" 
  ["path"]=> string(22) "index.php/hello/world/" 
  ["path_parts"]=> array(4) { 
    [0]=> string(9) "index.php" 
    [1]=> string(5) "hello" 
    [2]=> string(5) "world" 
    [3]=> string(0) ""
  } 
  ["query_string"]=> string(11) "hello=world" 
  ["query_vars"]=> array(1) { 
    ["hello"]=> string(5) "world" 
  } 
}

The fourth element in parts should probably not be there?

Do you have any ideas on how I can improve the code (make it shorter) and remove the obvious flaws mentioned above or any other ideas you have?

Answer 1

Ask what you need

Your function is useless. It can only parse the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] uri. why? simply have the uri as a parameter for the function.

URI or URL?

You actually expect an URL (subpart of URI). Every URL is a URI, but not every URI is a URL. ISBN numbers for instance are URI's but not URLS ;)

Use built in functions

PHP has a really nifty parse_url function. Use it ;) It does nearly the exact same things as your function.

The only thing you add is you split the path and arguments up into an array.

So lets' fix that

function parse_request_url($url)
{
    $parsedUri = parse_url($url);

    //split the path into an array
    //we trim here to get rid of empty path ("")
    $parsedUri['path'] = explode('/', trim($parsedUri,'/'));

    //split query string
    $query = explode('&',$parsedUri['query']);
    $parsedQuery = array();
    foreach ( $query as $q ) {
        list($key,$value) = explode('=',$q);
        $parsedQuery[$key] = $value;
    }
    $parsedUri['query'] = $parsedQuery;

    return $parsedUri;
}

Note: this code is not tested, so could be buggy ;) But you get the idea