Find URLs in Text, Make Links

Avatar of Chris Coyier
Chris Coyier on (Updated on )
<?php

// The Regular Expression filter
$reg_exUrl = "/(http|https|ftp|ftps)\:\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(\/\S*)?/";

// The Text you want to filter for urls
$text = "The text you want to filter goes here. http://google.com";

// Check if there is a url in the text
if(preg_match($reg_exUrl, $text, $url)) {

       // make the urls hyper links
       echo preg_replace($reg_exUrl, "<a href="{$url[0]}">{$url[0]}</a> ", $text);

} else {

       // if no urls in the text just return the text
       echo $text;

}
?>

The basic function of this is to find any URLs in the block of text and turn them into hyperlinks. It will only find URLs if they are properly formatted, meaning they have a http, https, ftp or ftps.

Check out the comments below for more solutions.