How to remove the querystring and get only the url?

Question

Im using PHP to build the URL of the current page. Sometimes, URLs in the form of

www.mydomian.com/myurl.html?unwantedthngs

are requested. I want to remove the ? and everything that follows it (querystring), such that the resulting URL becomes:

www.mydomain.com/myurl.html

My current code is this:

<?php
function curPageURL() {
    $pageURL = 'http';
    if ($_SERVER["HTTPS"] == "on") {
        $pageURL .= "s";
    }
    $pageURL .= "://";
    if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
        $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] . ":" .
            $_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] . $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
    } else {
        $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] . $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
    }
    return $pageURL;
}
?>

Answer 1

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

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

strtok() represents the most concise technique to directly extract the substring before the ? in the querystring. explode() is less direct because it must produce a potentially two-element array by which the first element must be accessed.

Some other techniques may break when the querystring is missing or potentially mutate other/unintended substrings in the url -- these techniques should be avoided.

A demonstration:

$urls = [
    'www.example.com/myurl.html?unwantedthngs#hastag',
    'www.example.com/myurl.html'
];

foreach ($urls as $url) {
    var_export(['strtok: ', strtok($url, '?')]);
    echo "\n";
    var_export(['strstr/true: ', strstr($url, '?', true)]); // not reliable
    echo "\n";
    var_export(['explode/2: ', explode('?', $url, 2)[0]]);  // limit allows func to stop searching after first encounter
    echo "\n";
    var_export(['substr/strrpos: ', substr($url, 0, strrpos( $url, "?"))]);  // not reliable; still not with strpos()
    echo "\n---\n";
}

Output:

array (
  0 => 'strtok: ',
  1 => 'www.example.com/myurl.html',
)
array (
  0 => 'strstr/true: ',
  1 => 'www.example.com/myurl.html',
)
array (
  0 => 'explode/2: ',
  1 => 'www.example.com/myurl.html',
)
array (
  0 => 'substr/strrpos: ',
  1 => 'www.example.com/myurl.html',
)
---
array (
  0 => 'strtok: ',
  1 => 'www.example.com/myurl.html',
)
array (
  0 => 'strstr/true: ',
  1 => false,                       // bad news
)
array (
  0 => 'explode/2: ',
  1 => 'www.example.com/myurl.html',
)
array (
  0 => 'substr/strrpos: ',
  1 => '',                          // bad news
)
---