Laravel 5.2 Split String First Name Last Name

Question

I have a string passed from a form which is full name.

in my database I store first name and last name.. I've split the string using the following:

$name = explode(" ", $request->name);
$lastname = array_pop($name);
$firstname = implode(" ", $name);

this works great, however, if the user doesn't enter a surname in the field then the above doesn't work as the lastname becomes the first.

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

This is what I've used for splitting names:

$splitName = explode(' ', $name, 2); // Restricts it to only 2 values, for names like Billy Bob Jones

$first_name = $splitName[0];
$last_name = !empty($splitName[1]) ? $splitName[1] : ''; // If last name doesn't exist, make it empty