Replace items in a url string in php

Question

I am new to php. And I am trying to replace the "hash(#)" in the url string with "ampersand(&)".

For example:

If the url is :`

http://www.abc.com/Cat/pgecategory.aspx?cid=8730&via=top#pge=2&pgeSize=36

I want to change it to

http://www.abc.com/Cat/pgecategory.aspx?cid=8730&via=top&pge=2&pgeSize=36

I have tried the following:

str_replace("#","&",$url);

But the above doesn't work? What am I doing wrong?

How can I achieve the above task?

What is the output of `var_dump($url)` ? – Rikesh Dec 23 '13 at 09:56 — Rikesh, Dec 23 '13 at 09:56

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 23 '13 at 13:33

4

Keep in mind that str_replace returns a string. It don't change the string you passed to it.

Try,

$url = str_replace("#", "&", $url); 
echo $url;

edited Dec 23 '13 at 13:33

Ahmed Siouani

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answered Dec 23 '13 at 09:57

Jite

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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 23 '13 at 09:57

3

The str_replace function returns the modified string, you have to set your url like this:

$url = str_replace("#","&",$url);

answered Dec 23 '13 at 09:57

Getz

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 23 '13 at 09:57

2

How come it didn't work. ? Have you tried outputting your result ?

<?php
$url='http://www.abc.com/Cat/pgecategory.aspx?cid=8730&via=top#pge=2&pgeSize=36';
echo $url=str_replace("#","&",$url);

answered Dec 23 '13 at 09:57

Shankar Damodaran

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@Mr.Alien: `echo $var = 'stuff';` is [perfectly valid syntax](http://3v4l.org/L39e4). – Amal Murali Dec 23 '13 at 09:59
@Mr.Alien, Check Jite's answer for your confusion. – Shankar Damodaran Dec 23 '13 at 10:01
@AmalMurali aaa I see, I thought it will throw an error because of echoing and assigning at the same time – Mr. Alien Dec 23 '13 at 10:01
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@ShankarDamodaran My bad :) – Mr. Alien Dec 23 '13 at 10:01
@Mr.Alien: I too discovered this only recently (about 1 month back) :D – Amal Murali Dec 23 '13 at 10:03
@AmalMurali there are so many things like these which are discovered by me reading questions on stack :D I thought that's not valid, so commented, anyways learnt something new again :P – Mr. Alien Dec 23 '13 at 10:05

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

It depends on what you are trying to do.

If you are trying to modify the URL the client requested, this is not possible.

Browsers simply do not send out the hash portion of the URL - so PHP can not even read it. However, you could read it through Javascript, with window.location.hash.

Source: Can I read the hash portion of the URL on my server-side application (PHP, Ruby, Python, etc.)?

If you are trying to modify the URL stored in a variable, this is possible.

str_replace does not change the value of $url - it just returns the result. If you want $url to match the return value of str_replace:

$url = 'http://www.abc.com/Cat/pgecategory.aspx?cid=8730&via=top#pge=2&pgeSize=36';
$url = str_replace('#', '&', $url);

Or even shorter:

$url = str_replace('#', '&', 'http://www.abc.com/Cat/pgecategory.aspx?cid=8730&via=top#pge=2&pgeSize=36');

Replace items in a url string in php

4 Answers4