PHP preg_match URL Segment Not Working

Question

I have a string:

https://domain.tld/123456/api/v1/projects/45242457-foo-bar.json

And I'm trying to match '45242457-foo-bar' using:

preg_match('~"/projects/(.*).json"~', $url, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

This keeps returning zero matches. Why?

Answer 1

You need to escape your period (and a greedy *):

~"/projects/(.*?)\.json"~