$re = '/ (?P<dialect>[^+:]+)
(?:
\+
(?P<driver>[^:]+)
)?
://
(?P<username>[^:@]+)
(?:
:
(?P<password>[^@]+)
)?
@
(?P<host>[^:/]+)
(?:
:
(?P<port>\S+)
)?
/
(?P<database>.*)
/x';
$str = 'dialect+driver://username:password@host:port/database';
preg_match($re, $str, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php