Get Domain Name from URL in PHP Using Regular Expressions

The following PHP code snippet extracts the domain name from long URL using regular expressions. For example, if you pass the following url, it will output stacktips.com.

http://stacktips.com/articles/drupal-vs-wordpress-which-one-to-choose

Snippet:

//Custom method to get domain name from url
function get_domain_from_url($url)
{
  $pieces = parse_url($url);
  $domain = isset($pieces['host']) ? $pieces['host'] : '';
  if (preg_match('/(?P<domain>[a-z0-9][a-z0-9\-]{1,63}\.[a-z\.]{2,6})$/i', $domain, $regs)) {
    return $regs['domain'];
  }
  return '';
}