need help making a link clickable!

[Anon]

hello

i'd really appreciate some help on this!

i have a webpage where a user can post a URL to his website.

i need to:

1. convert the users link into a clickable link
2. make sure the link which is displayed is truncated to less than 60 characters (so my tables don't stretch) i.e the HTML would look like <a href="the_full_URL\">the_URL_truncated_to_60_chars</a>

any help greatly appreciated!

thank you

[crislewis]

Assuming the URL is in $url:

$link = substr($url, 0, 60);
echo "<a href=\"$url\">$link</a>";

Cheers,

Cris

[jarice]

$linkout = "<a href =\"http://$url_in\">" .substr($url_in,1,60)."</a>\n";

print $linkout;

[Anon]

Thank you both.

One other question:

If the URL is in a string, i.e:

"this is my homepage

http://www.whatever.com"

do you know how i would extract the URL from that string? what about if there is more than one URL?

thank you!!

[crislewis]

looking into ereg(). This will do it for you.

Cheers,

Cris

[[deleted]]

This will work for most sites but there is a better way to do the ereg bit.

<?php
$message="hello this is mark, you can go to my site at www.hello.com or http://myothersite.com";

$message_array= explode(" ", $message);
for($loop=0;$loop < count($message_array);$loop++) {
$curtext = $message_array[$loop];
if ( (ereg(".com",$curtext ))||(ereg(".net",$curtext ))||(ereg(".biz",$curtext ))||(ereg(".info",$curtext ))||(ereg(".org",$curtext ))||(ereg(".co.uk",$curtext ))||(ereg(".cc",$curtext ))||(ereg(".ws",$curtext )) ) { //add any other you want - there's also a better way to find out if it's a URL
$curtext= eregi_replace("http://", "", $curtext);
$curtext = "<a href ='http://$curtext'>".substr($curtext,0,60)."</a>";
$message_array[$loop] = $curtext;
}
}

$message_formatted= implode(" ", $message_array);
echo $message_formatted;
?>

[Anon]

this you mark!! that is exactly what i was looking for!! you have saved me a lot of hassle.

here is an altered version of marks script which will make links clickable and also truncate any long links. this version works with data entered over multiple lines.

$message=$the-string-which-covers-multiple-lines;

				$message_array= explode("<br>", $message); //i used <br> but you could use \n

				for($loop=0; $loop < count($message_array); $loop++) 
				{ 
					$curtext = $message_array[$loop]; 

					$message_array2= explode(" ", $curtext);
					for($loop2=0; $loop2 < count($message_array2); $loop2++) 
					{ 
						$curtext2 = $message_array2[$loop2];
						if ( (ereg(".com",$curtext2 ))||(ereg(".net",$curtext2 ))||(ereg(".biz",$curtext2 ))||(ereg(".info",$curtext2 ))||(ereg(".org",$curtext2 ))||(ereg(".co.uk",$curtext2 ))||(ereg(".cc",$curtext2 ))||(ereg(".ws",$curtext2 )) ) 
						{ //add any other you want - there's also a better way to find out if it's a URL 
							$curtext2= eregi_replace("http://", "", $curtext2); 
							if (strlen($curtext2)>70)
								$curtext2 = "<a href ='http://$curtext2'>http://".substr($curtext2,0,70)."...</a>";
							else
								 $curtext2 = "<a href ='http://$curtext2'>http://".$curtext2."</a>";
							$message_array2[$loop2] = $curtext2; 
						} 
					} 

					$message_array[$loop]= implode(" ", $message_array2); 					
				} 

				$message_formatted= implode("<br>", $message_array); 

[Anon]

Would this situation also work if the url were something like http://www.foobar.com/foo/bar/more/stuff.php?

Just curious. I'm in a similar situation in writing a message board application in which the users would like to be able to post urls within their messages and have them clickable.

The audience who use this message board are for the most part computer-challenged.

Thanks for any advice,

Brad