PHP - Function To Find Links In Text

Question

I have got a function that converts strings like 'www.example.com' and 'http://example.com' in hyperlinks. It also deals with subdomains e.g. 'http://sub.example.com'.

But it fails with this one - http://www.example.com' and outputs the following

<a href="http://<a href="http://www.chemica.ru">www.chemica.ru</a>">http://<a href="http://www.chemica.ru">www.chemica.ru</a></a>

Please, can anyone help? The problem is that both 'http://' and 'www.' are together and both have different ways of converting.

function makeLinks($text){ 
 $text = eregi_replace('(((f|ht){1}tp://)[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&//=]+)', '<a href="\\1">\\1</a>', $text); 
 $text = eregi_replace('(www.[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&//=]+)', '<a href="http://\\1">\\1</a>', $text);
 $text = eregi_replace('([_\.0-9a-z-]+@([0-9a-z][0-9a-z-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,3})', '<a href="mailto:\\1">\\1</a>', $text); 
 return $text; 
}

FYI, eregi_* functions are deprecated. You should switch to preg_replace at some point in the near future. — webbiedave
– webbiedave, Commented Sep 21, 2010 at 17:18
PCRE allows for more advanced regex features than POSIX, as well. — Daniel Vandersluis
– Daniel Vandersluis, Commented Sep 21, 2010 at 18:01
possible duplicate of How to extract http links from a paragraph and store them in a array on php — hakre
– hakre, Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 20:16

Flexo - Save the data dump · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-28 11:03:32Z

4

just write to your view's page (you dont need any library or helper function) :

$text = "Good Site is http://masalahkita.com";
$link = preg_replace("/([\w]+:\/\/[\w-?&;#~=\.\/\@]+[\w\/])/i","<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"$1\">$1</a>", $text);

echo $link;

edited Jan 28, 2012 at 11:03

Flexo - Save the data dump♦

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answered Jan 28, 2012 at 10:19

andy

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1 Comment

abe1432181 Over a year ago

This code works up to PHP7.2.31 but fails from 7.3 onwards ("preg_replace(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 14"). See sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/…

Tim Pietzcker · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-21 17:28:51Z

2

You might want to read this blog post by Jan Goyvaerts for some ideas on how to find URLs in text.

To solve your immediate problem, you could add a negative lookbehind to your second regex: (?<!http://)(www.[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&/=]+) ensures that www... will only be matched if it is not preceded by http://.

However, ereg functions are deprecated and don't support lookaround, so you'll need to use preg_replace().

$text = preg_replace('/(?<!http:\/\/)(www.[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&\/=]+)/i', '<a href="http://\1">\1</a>', $text);

should work.

answered Sep 21, 2010 at 17:28

Tim Pietzcker

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Comments

Naveed · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-21 17:54:37Z

0

For both 'http://' and 'www.' together, you can do something like this:

$text = "http://www.example.com is a nice site";
$link = preg_replace("/([\w]+:\/\/[\w-?&;#~=\.\/\@]+[\w\/])/i","<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"$1\">$1</a>", $text);
echo $link;

Works for URLs starts with http://

edited Sep 21, 2010 at 17:54

answered Sep 21, 2010 at 17:47

Naveed

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1 Comment

abe1432181 Over a year ago

As above in andy's solution - this works up until PHP7.3

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