Get the full URL in PHP

Question

I use this code to get the full URL:

$actual_link = 'http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

The problem is that I use some masks in my .htaccess, so what we see in the URL is not always the real path of the file.

What I need is to get the URL, what is written in the URL, nothing more and nothing less—the full URL.

I need to get how it appears in the Navigation Bar in the web browser, and not the real path of the file on the server.

Answer 1

Have a look at $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], i.e.

$actual_link = "https://$_SERVER[HTTP_HOST]$_SERVER[REQUEST_URI]";

(Note that the double quoted string syntax is perfectly correct.)

If you want to support both HTTP and HTTPS, you can use

$actual_link = (empty($_SERVER['HTTPS']) ? 'http' : 'https') . "://$_SERVER[HTTP_HOST]$_SERVER[REQUEST_URI]";

⚠️ This code has security implications because the client and the server can set HTTP_HOST and REQUEST_URI to arbitrary values. It is absolutely necessary to sanitize both values and do proper input validation (CWE-20). They must not be used in any security context.