How to remove escaped forward slash using php?

Question

I am using the Google Drive API and the refresh_token I obtain has an escaped forward slash. While this should be valid JSON, the API won't accept it when calling refreshToken(). I am trying to remove the backslash using preg_replace:

$access_token = "1\/MgotwOvbwZN9MVxH5PrLR2cpvX1EJl8omgYdA9rrjx8";
$access_token = preg_replace('/\\\//', '/', $access_token);

I would like the returned string to be:

"1/MgotwOvbwZN9MVxH5PrLR2cpvX1EJl8omgYdA9rrjx8";

I've tried various expressions, but it either doesn't remove the backslash or it returns an empty string. Note that I don't want to remove all backslashes, only the ones escaping a forward slash.

Answer 1

Avoid regex and just use str_replace:

$access_token = "1\/MgotwOvbwZN9MVxH5PrLR2cpvX1EJl8omgYdA9rrjx8";
$access_token = str_replace( '\/', '/', $access_token );
//=> 1/MgotwOvbwZN9MVxH5PrLR2cpvX1EJl8omgYdA9rrjx8

Answer 2

Well, there's a standard function that does just that: stripslashes

So please avoid regex, str_replace et al.

It's as simple as it takes:

$access_token = stripslashes($access_token);