Check if two URL strings are the same PHP

Question

How to check if two URL strings are the same for example

http://example.com

http://example.com/

https://example.com/

http://example.com/#

All the above url points to same page

Suppose i am having a directory of urls in my database and i am adding a url to the database which is already present. how can i validate for uniqueness for the above scenario using PHP.

Answer 1

Use parse_url to break down the URLs into parts and compare those that must match for your definition of "the same".

For example:

function areUrlsTheSame($url1, $url2)
{
    $mustMatch = array_flip(['host', 'port', 'path']);
    $defaults = ['path' => '/']; // if not present, assume these (consistency)
    $url1 = array_intersect_key(parse_url($url1), $mustMatch);
    $url2 = array_intersect_key(parse_url($url2), $mustMatch);

    return $url1 === $url2;
}

See it in action.