How do I extract query parameters from a URL string in PHP?

Question

Users can input URLs using a HTML form on my website, so they might enter something like this: http://www.example.com?test=123&random=abc, it can be anything. I need to

Answer 1

the hostname is optional but is required at least the question mark at the begin of parameter string:

$inputString = '?test=123&random=abc&usersList[]=1&usersList[]=2' ;

parse_str ( parse_url ( $inputString , PHP_URL_QUERY ) , $params );

print_r ( $params );