get user name from an E-mail address in php

Question

In PHP, I have a string like this:

$string = "[email protected]";

How do I get the "user" from email address only? Is there any easy way to get the value before @?

Answer 1

Assuming the email address is valid, this textual approach should work:

$prefix = substr($email, 0, strrpos($email, '@'));

It takes everything up to (but not including) the last occurrence of @. It uses the last occurrence because this email address is valid:

"foo\@bar"@iana.org

If you haven't validated the string yet, I would advice using a filter function:

if (($email = filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) !== false) {
    // okay, should be valid now
}

Answer 2

Try the following:

$string = "[email protected]";

$explode = explode("@",$string);

array_pop($explode);

$newstring = join('@', $explode);

echo $newstring;

Modified for multiple '@' symbols.