Simple test, accessing http://localhost:8000/hello?foo=bar#this-is-not-sent-to-server
python -c "import SimpleHTTPServer;SimpleHTTPServer.test()"
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...
localhost - - [02/Jun/2009 12:48:47] code 404, message File not found
localhost - - [02/Jun/2009 12:48:47] "GET /hello?foo=bar HTTP/1.1" 404 -
The server receives the request without the #appendage – anything after the hash tag is simply an anchor lookup on the client.
You can find the anchor name used within the URL via javascript using, as an example:
<script>alert(window.location.hash);</script>
The parse_url() function in PHP can work if you already have the needed URL string including the fragment (http://codepad.org/BDqjtXix):
<?
echo parse_url("http://foo?bar#fizzbuzz",PHP_URL_FRAGMENT);
?>
Output: fizzbuzz
But I don’t think PHP receives the fragment information because it’s client-only.