[Resolved] [Resolved] link to a website

[chintupintu03]

Hi all,

In my one of the programs, I am accepting and storing the details of persons / organisations through a form. One of the fields is storing the URL.

If the value is stored as " www.mysite.com " in the database, then while retriving the records the URL is shown as it is and the site doesn't get opened.

If the above value is stored as "http://www.mysite.com", then the href works.

What can be the problem? Presently, I have checked for [url]http://[/url] before storing in the database. But is it the only way or any other method can be applied?

[drew010]

if substr($row['link'], 0, 7) != "http://") {
  echo "<a href=\"http://{$row['link']}\" target=\"_new\">Link</a>";
} else {
  echo "<a href=\"{$row['link']}\" target=\"_new\">Link</a>";
}

that will determine how the link needs to be formed in order to work.

[drawmack]

you could also use [man]fsockopen[/man]

<?php
//assuming that $url is the url you want to link to
$link = '';
if(($fh = fsockopen($url,80,$errno,$error,10)) !== FALSE)
    $link = $url;
elseif(($fh = fsockopen('http://'.$url,80,$errno,$error,10)) !== FALSE)
    $link = 'http://' . $url;
?>

after this runs $link will be the properly formatted $url. However if the page pointed to by $url is off line for any reason then $link will be empty. This gives you the added benefit of being able to link to urls that are active and display warnings for those that are not.