PHP urldecode() Function

The PHP urldecode() function decodes any %## encoding in the given string. Plus symbols ('+') are decoded to a space character.

Syntax

urldecode(string)

Parameters

string Required. Specify the string to be decoded.

Return Value

Returns the decoded string.

Example:

The example below shows the usage of urldecode() function.

<?php
echo urldecode("https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alphacodingskills.com")."\n";
echo urldecode("https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alphacodingskills.com%2Fcompilers.php")."\n";
echo urldecode("https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alphacodingskills.com%2Fqt%2Fquicktables.php")."\n";
?>

The output of the above code will be:

https://www.alphacodingskills.com
https://www.alphacodingskills.com/compilers.php
https://www.alphacodingskills.com/qt/quicktables.php

Example:

Consider the example below which shows how a string is encoded and decoded.

<?php
$str1 = "https://www.alphacodingskills.com";
$encoded_str1 = urlencode($str1);

echo "The string is: $str1 \n";
echo "Encoded string: $encoded_str1 \n";

$str2 = "https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alphacodingskills.com";
$decoded_str2 = urldecode($str2);

echo "\nThe string is: $str2 \n";
echo "Decoded string: $decoded_str2 \n";
?>

The output of the above code will be:

The string is: https://www.alphacodingskills.com 
Encoded string: https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alphacodingskills.com 

The string is: https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alphacodingskills.com 
Decoded string: https://www.alphacodingskills.com

Example:

Consider one more example which demonstrates on extracting data from encoded string using this function.

<?php
$query = "my=apples&are=green+and+red";

foreach (explode('&', $query) as $chunk) {
  $param = explode("=", $chunk);

  if ($param) {
    printf("Value for parameter \"%s\" is \"%s\" \n", 
           urldecode($param[0]), 
           urldecode($param[1]));
  }
}
?>

The output of the above code will be:

Value for parameter "my" is "apples" 
Value for parameter "are" is "green and red"

❮ PHP URLs Reference