Question

In PHP, I need to be able to figure out if a string contains a URL. If there is a URL, I need to isolate it as another separate string.

For example: “SESAC showin the Love! http://twitpic.com/1uk7fi”

I need to be able to isolate the URL in that string into a new string. At the same time the URL needs to be kept intact in the original string. Follow?

I know this is probably really simple but it’s killing me.

Answer 1

Something like

preg_match('/[a-zA-Z]+:\/\/[0-9a-zA-Z;.\/?:@=_#&%~,+$]+/', $string, $matches);

$matches[0] will hold the result.

(Note: this regex is certainly not RFC compliant; it may fetch malformed (per the spec) URLs. See http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1738.html).