Extract part of an URL

I need to extract the third part of the URL (if it is there).
Demo URL: http://www.glitters8.com/graphics/friends/blah..etc..

I need to extract the 3rd part (ie. friends), as long as it exist. What`s the best way to do that?

 

<?php
$url = 'http://www.glitters8.com/graphics/friends/blah';
$parsed_url = parse_url($url);
$exploded = explode('/', $parsed_url['path']);

print $exploded[2];
?>

Code (markup):

It would be easier to get with regex, but I used parse_url since it's faster to write.