PHP - Proper Protocol for storing URLs in $_GET

Question

What is the proper protocol for storing other websites URL's in your own php page's URL?

For example if I wanted to store google it would be easy.

MySite.com/test.php?url=http://www.google.com

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But what about a URL more complex than http://www.google.com, like if I wanted to store another website's PHP page.

(e.g. http://www.AnotherSite.com/page1.php?key=value&key2=value2&key3=value3)

Then how would I store it in my PHP page's URL? Do you replace all of the "&" symbols with a "\&" phrase? Is there a better method? Does that even work in the first place?

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Thanks!!!

Answer 1

Just encode the URLs. You can use the PHP functions urlencode() and urldecode() for that.

Answer 2

If you don't want to think about it:

$url = 'mysite.com/test.php?' . http_build_query(array(
    'url' => $anything_you_want,
));

Otherwise:

$url = 'mysite.com/test.php?url=' . urlencode($anything_you_want);

You could also use rawurlencode(). Notable difference is that it follows RFC 3986.

Further reading:

http_build_query() urlencode() rawurlencode()

Answer 3

Just encode it with urlencode() if you want to use the entire URL as one parameter:

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php

Example:

$url = 'http://www.AnotherSite.com/page1.php?key=value&key2=value2&key3=value';
echo 'http://MySite.com/test.php?url='.urlencode($url);

Answer 4

You can use encoding for the urls. There are very simple methods built in to PHP to do that.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php