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How to Find the Current URL with PHP

Published 2 years, 9 months ago in Basics and PHP

The full URL to a page comes in three parts: The domain name, the path to the file then the filename, and the query string. For example, take the URL http://www.example.com/example/page.php?name=Bob. The three parts of this are:

1. The domain name: www.example.com
2. The path to the page: /example/page.php
3. The query string: name=Bob

So how do you find it all out with your own PHP scripts?

All of the information we need is stored in the $_SERVER array, which is accessible from anywhere in your PHP script (and as such is called a superglobal variable), it works like a normal array and the keys we wish to retrieve the values of are 'HTTP_HOST', 'SCRIPT_NAME' and 'QUERY_STRING' for the three different parts of the url. Alternatively, if we don't need to have the path to the page and the query string seperate, we can use 'REQUEST_URI'.

The following code should let you find it:

Click here to view the below code as plain text
CODE:
  1. <?php
  2.   // find out the domain:
  3.   $domain = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
  4.   // find out the path to the current file:
  5.   $path = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];
  6.   // find out the QueryString:
  7.   $queryString = $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];
  8.   // put it all together:
  9.   $url = "http://" . $domain . $path . "?" . $queryString;
  10.   echo "The current URL is: " . $url . "<br />";
  11.  
  12.   // An alternative way is to use REQUEST_URI instead of both
  13.   // SCRIPT_NAME and QUERY_STRING, if you don't need them seperate:
  14.   $url2 = "http://" . $domain . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
  15.   echo "The alternative way: " . $url2;
  16. ?>

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5 Responses to “How to Find the Current URL with PHP”  

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  1. Gravatar Icon 1 Zudolou May 26th, 2006 at 7:40 pm

    You might want to get the https as well.

    $http = ($_SERVER[’HTTPS’] ? ‘https://’ : ‘http://’);

    $url2 = $http . $domain . $_SERVER[’REQUEST_URI’];

  2. Gravatar Icon 2 Mr. Brown Eyes May 27th, 2006 at 4:59 am

    How about anchor link? #anchor

  3. Gravatar Icon 3 Lalit Jan 27th, 2007 at 9:31 am

    thanks dear,
    very very thanking you.

  4. Gravatar Icon 4 Nick May 8th, 2007 at 2:55 pm

    These techniques dont work for me, wont solve my problem. These methods will tell you what the file path is of the script that is running it. It is also possible to have one script initiate another with the include() command… which still works according to your techniques. The URL that is returned will be that of the highest level, the first script that initiated the cascade of scripts.

    But, HTML is capable of referencing PHP, say, in an , , or tag or something (like in the case of GD Image Libraries). The above techniques will not work for this situation. The above techniques will only return the URL of the highest level PHP script file, not the URL in the address bar, the URL of the page being displayed, the page that initiated the script in the first place.

    Is there a way to read directly the URL that the browser is displaying? This would be the highest level URL in any given window.

  5. Gravatar Icon 5 Kenneth May 11th, 2007 at 7:53 am

    I have been looking for this for quite some time, thanks

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