Working with URIs

CodeIgniter provides an object oriented solution for working with URI’s in your application. Using this makes it simple to ensure that the structure is always correct, no matter how complex the URI might be, as well as adding relative URI to an existing one and have it resolved safely and correctly.

• Creating URI instances
  • The Current URI
• URI Strings
• The URI Parts
  • Scheme
  • Authority
  • Userinfo
  • Host
  • Port
  • Path
  • Query
  • Fragment
• URI Segments
• Disable Throwing Exceptions

Creating URI instances

Creating a URI instance is as simple as creating a new class instance:

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI();

Alternatively, you can use the service() function to return an instance for you:

$uri = service('uri');

When you create the new instance, you can pass a full or partial URL in the constructor and it will be parsed into its appropriate sections:

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('http://www.example.com/some/path');
$uri = service('uri', 'http://www.example.com/some/path');

The Current URI

Many times, all you really want is an object representing the current URL of this request. This can be accessed in two different ways. The first is to grab it directly from the current request object. Assuming that you’re in a controller that extends CodeIgniter\Controller you can get it like:

$uri = $this->request->uri;

Second, you can use one of the functions available in the url_helper:

$uri = current_url(true);

You must pass true as the first parameter, otherwise, it will return the string representation of the current URL.

URI Strings

Many times, all you really want is to get a string representation of a URI. This is easy to do by simply casting the URI as a string:

$uri = current_url(true);
echo (string)$uri;  // http://example.com

If you know the pieces of the URI and just want to ensure it’s all formatted correctly, you can generate a string using the URI class’ static createURIString() method:

$uriString = URI::createURIString($scheme, $authority, $path, $query, $fragment);

// Creates: http://exmample.com/some/path?foo=bar#first-heading
echo URI::createURIString('http', 'example.com', 'some/path', 'foo=bar', 'first-heading');

The URI Parts

Once you have a URI instance, you can set or retrieve any of the various parts of the URI. This section will provide details on what those parts are, and how to work with them.

Scheme

The scheme is frequently ‘http’ or ‘https’, but any scheme is supported, including ‘file’, ‘mailto’, etc.

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('http://www.example.com/some/path');

echo $uri->getScheme(); // 'http'
$uri->setScheme('https');

Authority

Many URIs contain several elements that are collectively known as the ‘authority’. This includes any user info, the host and the port number. You can retrieve all of these pieces as one single string with the getAuthority() method, or you can manipulate the individual parts.

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('ftp://user:[email protected]:21/some/path');

echo $uri->getAuthority();  // [email protected]:21

By default, this will not display the password portion since you wouldn’t want to show that to anyone. If you want to show the password, you can use the showPassword() method. This URI instance will continue to show that password until you turn it off again, so always make sure that you turn it off as soon as you are finished with it:

echo $uri->getAuthority();  // [email protected]:21
echo $uri->showPassword()->getAuthority();   // user:[email protected]:21

// Turn password display off again.
$uri->showPassword(false);

If you do not want to display the port, pass in true as the only parameter:

echo $uri->getAuthority(true);  // [email protected]

Userinfo

The userinfo section is simply the username and password that you might see with an FTP URI. While you can get this as part of the Authority, you can also retrieve it yourself:

echo $uri->getUserInfo();   // user

By default, it will not display the password, but you can override that with the showPassword() method:

echo $uri->showPassword()->getUserInfo();   // user:password
$uri->showPassword(false);

Host

The host portion of the URI is typically the domain name of the URL. This can be easily set and retrieved with the getHost() and setHost() methods:

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('http://www.example.com/some/path');

echo $uri->getHost();   // www.example.com
echo $uri->setHost('anotherexample.com')->getHost();    // anotherexample.com

Port

The port is an integer number between 0 and 65535. Each sheme has a default value associated with it.

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('ftp://user:[email protected]:21/some/path');

echo $uri->getPort();   // 21
echo $uri->setPort(2201)->getPort(); // 2201

When using the setPort() method, the port will be checked that it is within the valid range and assigned.

Path

The path are all of the segments within the site itself. As expected, the getPath() and setPath() methods can be used to manipulate it:

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('http://www.example.com/some/path');

echo $uri->getPath();   // 'some/path'
echo $uri->setPath('another/path')->getPath();  // 'another/path'

Query

The query variables can be manipulated through the class using simple string representations. Query values can only be set as a string currently.

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('http://www.example.com?foo=bar');

echo $uri->getQuery();  // 'foo=bar'
$uri->setQuery('foo=bar&bar=baz');

You can set query values using an array:

$uri->setQueryArray(['foo' => 'bar', 'bar' => 'baz']);

The setQuery() and setQueryArray() methods overwrite any existing query variables. You can add a value to the query variables collection without destroying the existing query variables with the addQuery() method. The first parameter is the name of the variable, and the second parameter is the value:

$uri->addQuery('foo', 'bar');

Filtering Query Values

You can filter the query values returned by passing an options array to the getQuery() method, with either an only or an except key:

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('http://www.example.com?foo=bar&bar=baz&baz=foz');

// Returns 'foo=bar'
echo $uri->getQuery(['only' => ['foo']);

// Returns 'foo=bar&baz=foz'
echo $uri->getQuery(['except' => ['bar']]);

This only changes the values returned during this one call. If you need to modify the URI’s query values more permanently, you can use the stripQuery() and keepQuery() methods to change the actual object’s query variable collection:

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('http://www.example.com?foo=bar&bar=baz&baz=foz');

// Leaves just the 'baz' variable
$uri->stripQuery('foo', 'bar');

// Leaves just the 'foo' variable
$uri->keepQuery('foo');

Fragment

Fragments are the portion at the end of the URL, preceded by the pound-sign (#). In HTML URL’s these are links to an on-page anchor. Media URI’s can make use of them in various other ways.

$uri = new \CodeIgniter\HTTP\URI('http://www.example.com/some/path#first-heading');

echo $uri->getFragment();   // 'first-heading'
echo $uri->setFragment('second-heading')->getFragment();    // 'second-heading'

URI Segments

Each section of the path between the slashes is a single segment. The URI class provides a simple way to determine what the values of the segments are. The segments start at 1 being the furthest left of the path.

// URI = http://example.com/users/15/profile

// Prints '15'
if ($uri->getSegment(1) == 'users')
{
        echo $uri->getSegment(2);
}

You can also set a different default value for a particular segment by using the second parameter of the getSegment() method. The default is empty string.

// URI = http://example.com/users/15/profile

// will print 'profile'
echo $uri->getSegment(3, 'foo');
// will print 'bar'
echo $uri->getSegment(4, 'bar');
// will throw an exception
echo $uri->getSegment(5, 'baz');
// will print 'baz'
echo $uri->setSilent()->getSegment(5, 'baz');
// will print '' (empty string)
echo $uri->setSilent()->getSegment(5);

You can get a count of the total segments:

$total = $uri->getTotalSegments(); // 3

Finally, you can retrieve an array of all of the segments:

$segments = $uri->getSegments();

// $segments =
[
        0 => 'users',
        1 => '15',
        2 => 'profile'
]

Disable Throwing Exceptions

By default, some methods of this class may throw an exception. If you want to disable it, you can set a special flag that will prevent throwing exceptions.

// Disable throwing exceptions
$uri->setSilent();

// Enable throwing exceptions (default)
$uri->setSilent(false);