php url linking

Anon

hi
i have this line...

<?php printf("<a href=".$row4['source'].">".$row4['title']."</a>"); ?>

the soruce is the link to anywebsite and title is the text for it...now the problem is its making it a local link...
http://localhost/www.yahoo.com

and i want it to open www.yahoo.com....
anyway i can do

regards
aasim

Anon

<?php printf("<a href="http://www.yahoo.com/".$row4['source'].">".$row4['title']."</a>"); ?>

Cheer...

mikesgt2

<?php printf("<a href=http://".$row4['source'].">".$row4['title']."</a>"); ?>

That may work but if the website is from user input then you don't know wheter it will have http:// in front.

I use a function like this one:

function cleanURL($url)
{
$url = strtolower($url);
if (!(strpos($url, "http://") === 0))
$url = "http://$url";
return $url;
}
this takes a url string and adds http:// in front if it isn't already there. then all stored urls will have http:// in front and will not be local links.

Anon

1). Turning the URL to lowercase is a bad idea, as *nix servers are case-sensitive.
2) You are assuming the user entered the server name as well as the simple link.

If you really wanna check a url, you gonna need lot more checking that!

function cleanURL($url) {

$url = trim($url);
if (eregi("http*://", $url)) {
return $url;
} elseif (eregi("[\w]+.[\w]+.[\w]+", $url)) {
//Might wanna check my regular expression
return "http://$url";
} else {
//No server specified, do whatever ya want

}

}

Anon

thanks

it works for me!!!