haphpiness

URI Extension — Proper URL Parsing at Last

PHP 8.5 introduces a built-in URI extension with immutable, standards-compliant URL objects. It supports both RFC 3986 and the WHATWG URL Standard — replacing the limited phpparse_url with something that actually handles real-world URLs correctly.

use Uri\Rfc3986\Uri;

// Parse and inspect
$uri = new Uri('https://user:pass@example.com:8080/path?q=php#section');
echo $uri->getScheme();    // "https"
echo $uri->getHost();      // "example.com"
echo $uri->getPort();      // 8080
echo $uri->getPath();      // "/path"
echo $uri->getQuery();     // "q=php"
echo $uri->getFragment();  // "section"

// Immutable modification with fluent interface
$api = $uri
    ->withScheme('https')
    ->withHost('api.example.com')
    ->withPort(null)
    ->withPath('/v2/users')
    ->withQuery('page=1');

echo (string) $api;  // "https://api.example.com/v2/users?page=1"

// WHATWG URL Standard — how browsers parse URLs
use Uri\WhatWg\Url;

$url = new Url('https://example.com/path/../other');
echo $url->getPath();  // "/other" — resolved, like a browser

// Proper validation — no more silent parse_url failures
try {
    $bad = new Uri('not a url');
} catch (Uri\InvalidUriException $e) {
    echo $e->getMessage();
}

The old parse_url() was famously unreliable — it silently returned partial results for malformed URLs and couldn't handle many valid URL formats. The new URI classes provide proper validation, normalization, and immutable modification.