PHP get URL string parameters?

Question

After reading many articles here, I did not find a solution, so I need help to do this... My URLs are those Example:

Home Page

https://mywebsite.com/
https://mywebsite.com/al/
https://mywebsite.com/it/
https://mywebsite.com/videos/
https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/
https://mywebsite.com/it/videos/
https://mywebsite.com/news/
https://mywebsite.com/al/news/
https://mywebsite.com/it/news/

Query

https://mywebsite.com/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/videos/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/news/search/?q=YouTube

https://mywebsite.com/al/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/al/news/search/?q=YouTube

https://mywebsite.com/it/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/it/videos/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/it/news/search/?q=YouTube

My php & html to change the language

<?php $Ava_Sulg = $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];?>

<a class="x" href="/<?php echo $Ava_Sulg;?>">EN</a>
<a class="x" href="/al<?php echo $Ava_Sulg;?>">AL</a>
<a class="x" href="/it<?php echo $Ava_Sulg;?>">IT</a>

so I'm allowing users to change their language, that what I want to do, is when they change the language the url can be one of the above, example if they change the language from AL to IT and url is https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/search/?q=YouTube with PHP I want to get this https://mywebsite.com/it/videos/search/?q=YouTube so I want to change from this url only (/al/ to /it/) or exmaple from IT to EN (/it/ to Nothing) but that what I want to change is in the middle, and on home page is different, it is very difficult for me, How I can do this is this possible or no? I hope to find a solution here, if possible! Thank you very mouch.

Answer 1

Since you are only interested in manipulating the path component you can simply use parse_url to extract the path component instead of regex:

function generateurl($url, $lc) {
    $parts = parse_url($url);
    $parts['path'] = preg_replace('@^/[a-z][a-z]/@', '/', $parts['path']);
    if ($lc !== 'en') {
        $parts['path'] = '/' . $lc . $parts['path'];
    }
    $url = '';
    if (isset($parts['scheme'])) $url .= $parts['scheme'] . '://';
    if (isset($parts['host'])) $url .= $parts['host'];
    if (isset($parts['port'])) $url .= ':' . $parts['port'];
    if (isset($parts['path'])) $url .= $parts['path'];
    if (isset($parts['query'])) $url .= '?' . $parts['query'];
    if (isset($parts['fragment'])) $url .= '#' . $parts['fragment'];
    return $url;
}

The above function could be simplified if you have http_build_url function available. Function input and output:

                           https://mywebsite.com/ + en = https://mywebsite.com/
                           https://mywebsite.com/ + al = https://mywebsite.com/al/
                           https://mywebsite.com/ + it = https://mywebsite.com/it/
                        https://mywebsite.com/al/ + en = https://mywebsite.com/
                        https://mywebsite.com/al/ + al = https://mywebsite.com/al/
                        https://mywebsite.com/al/ + it = https://mywebsite.com/it/

                    https://mywebsite.com/videos/ + en = https://mywebsite.com/videos/
                    https://mywebsite.com/videos/ + al = https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/
                    https://mywebsite.com/videos/ + it = https://mywebsite.com/it/videos/
                 https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/ + en = https://mywebsite.com/videos/
                 https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/ + al = https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/
                 https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/ + it = https://mywebsite.com/it/videos/

   https://mywebsite.com/videos/search/?q=YouTube + en = https://mywebsite.com/videos/search/?q=YouTube
   https://mywebsite.com/videos/search/?q=YouTube + al = https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/search/?q=YouTube
   https://mywebsite.com/videos/search/?q=YouTube + it = https://mywebsite.com/it/videos/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/search/?q=YouTube + en = https://mywebsite.com/videos/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/search/?q=YouTube + al = https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/search/?q=YouTube
https://mywebsite.com/al/videos/search/?q=YouTube + it = https://mywebsite.com/it/videos/search/?q=YouTube

                        /videos/search/?q=YouTube + en = /videos/search/?q=YouTube
                        /videos/search/?q=YouTube + al = /al/videos/search/?q=YouTube
                        /videos/search/?q=YouTube + it = /it/videos/search/?q=YouTube
                     /al/videos/search/?q=YouTube + en = /videos/search/?q=YouTube
                     /al/videos/search/?q=YouTube + al = /al/videos/search/?q=YouTube
                     /al/videos/search/?q=YouTube + it = /it/videos/search/?q=YouTube