ignore url in PHP regex

Question

I've got a utility where I'm trying to enforce brand standards in an application where the function will wrap brand words in a span with a class.

public function filterBrandWords($text)
    {
        // look up the brand words from the config settings
        $filter_terms = ['brandword1', 'brandword2', 'brandword3'];
        $filtered_text = $text;

        foreach ($filter_terms as $word) {
            $match_count = preg_match_all('/' . $word . '/i', $text, $matches);

            for ($i = 0; $i < $match_count; $i++) {
                $brand_string = trim($matches[0][$i]);
                $lower = strtolower($brand_string);
                $new = '<span class="font-semibold">' . substr($lower, 0, 3) . '</span>' . substr($lower, 3);
                $filtered_text = preg_replace('/\b' . $brand_string . '\b/', $new, $filtered_text);
            }
        }

        return $filtered_text;
    }

This works but noticed that it's also filtering text that contains the brand URL when applied.

I tried amending $match_count = preg_match_all('/' . $word . '/i', $text, $matches); to $match_count = preg_match_all('/' . $word . 'com$' . '/i', $text, $matches); in the hope it would ignore matches with com in them.

What have I gotten wrong here the regex?

If I do

echo filterBrandWords('brandword1');

the output is

<span class="font-semibold">bra</span>ndword1

with a URL, the output is

<span class="font-semibold">bra</span>ndword1.com

In those instances, I want to ignore the filter and just give it straight.

Can you share with us some sample input and the output you expect? — Jay Blanchard
– Jay Blanchard, Commented Sep 10, 2020 at 18:28
also @JayBlanchard I like your use of Charles Rennie Mackintosh font on your website :) — Steven Grant
– Steven Grant, Commented Sep 10, 2020 at 18:35
you keep talking about URLs but there are no URLs in what you've shown us here. — symcbean
– symcbean, Commented Sep 10, 2020 at 18:49

Jay Blanchard · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-10 19:27:50Z

If you want to ignore anything like a URL you can use something like this as your regex:

(?|.*\.(com|net|org))

which is a Negative Lookahead assertion that matches URL's (broadly). Insert that into your function as I have done here:

function filterBrandWords($text)
    {
        // look up the brand words from the config settings
        $filter_terms = ['brandword1', 'brandword2', 'brandword3'];
        $filtered_text = $text;
        
        if(!preg_match('/(?|.*\.(com|net|org))/', $filtered_text)) { // if it resembles a URL, skip it
            
            foreach ($filter_terms as $word) {
                $match_count = preg_match_all('/' . $word . '/i', $text, $matches);
    
                for ($i = 0; $i < $match_count; $i++) {
                    $brand_string = trim($matches[0][$i]);
                    $lower = strtolower($brand_string);
                    $new = '<span class="font-semibold">' . substr($lower, 0, 3) . '</span>' . substr($lower, 3);
                    $filtered_text = preg_replace('/\b' . $brand_string . '\b/', $new, $filtered_text);
                }
            }
        }

        return $filtered_text;
    }

Now call the function with something resembling a URL:

echo filterBrandWords('brandword1.com');

And the entire URL is just returned:

brandword1.com

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