How to extract the user name from the email ID using PHP ?

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025

Given a string email address, extract the username.

Input: ‘priyank@geeks.com’
Output: priyank

Input: ‘princepriyank@gfg.com’
Output: princepriyank

Approach 1: Using PHP strstr() to extract the username from the email address.

In this, “@” symbol is the separator for the domain name and user name of the email address. The strstr() PHP function is used to search for the first occurrence of a string i.e. "@" inside another string i.e. email address to get the username as result.

Step 1: Define a variable and store the value of the email address in it.
```
$email= 'priyank@geeks.com';
```
Step 2: Get the username by slicing the string till the first occurrence of '@' using this line
```
$username=strstr($email,'@',true);
```
Step 3: Display the username using an echo statement.
```
echo $username."\n";
```

Example:

Output

priyank

Approach 2: Using PHP explode() function.

In this, we harness the fact that the “@” symbol is the separator for the domain name and user name of the email address. So explode() is used to break a string into an array by a separator "@".

Step 1: Define a variable email and store the value of email address in it.
```
$email= 'princepriyank@geeks.com';
```
Step 2: Get the username by exploding (dividing) the string using '@' as a separator and store the first part in the variable username.
```
$parts = explode("@",$email);
$username = $parts[0];
```
Step 3: Display the username using this code.
```
echo $username."\n";
```