[RESOLVED] URL Entities Detector

lupus2k5

I know this has something to do with str_str or sub_str or something....
Anyway, how can I detect URLs (and replace them) in a string?
E.g.
THE STRING IS:

Blah blah blah http://www.somewebsite.com/ blah blah http://www.google.com blah.

I WANT IT TO TURN INTO:

Blah blah blah <a href="http://www.somewebsite.com/" target="blank">[link]</a> blah blah <a href="http://www.google.com" target="blank">[link]</a> blah.

Thanks ahead of time.

bpat1434

Honestly in this situation you'd probably be better off doing preg_replace rather than simple string functions. I guess it would look something like the following:

<?php

$input = 'Blah blah blah http://www.somewebsite.com/ blah blah http://www.google.com blah.'; // The text to be searched

$pattern = "/(http\:\/\/www\.[^\s\t\n]*)[\s|\t|\n]/i"; // Replace any URL until a space or tab or new line is reached
$replacement = '<a href="$1" target="_blank">[link]</a> '; // Make it a [link] link

$output = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $input); // do the replacement

echo $output;

?>

That gives you:

Blah blah blah [link] blah blah [link] blah.

lupus2k5

Where are you getting the $1 variable from?

cheerio

It's regular expressions.

bpat1434

$1 in the replacement string refers to the contents of what is seen in the pattern between the b[/b] parenthesis. So strings like:
http://www.somedomain.com
http://www.google.com
will be inserted where $1 is in the replacement string.

If you don't understand, you can read up on it over at the preg_replace() manual page

lupus2k5

But variables can't be assigned just an integer, PHP calls it T_DNUMBER.
I don't understand.

lupus2k5

Woops, posted at the same time.
I read about preg_replace() in the manual, but I didn't see references to this...
I copied your code, but it didn't work, I got the error I thought I was going to get: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_DNUMBER, expecting T_VARIABLE or '$' in /home/www/script/funcs.php on line 23

Here's my code:
<?php
$output = preg_replace("/(http:\/\/www.[^{\s\t\n]*)[\s|\t|\n]/i","<a} href=\"javascript:void(0);\" onclick=\"popUp('$1');\" title=\"$1\">[link]</a>",$input);
echo $input."<hr>...converted to...<hr>".$output;
?>

lupus2k5

I figured it out. I just changed $1 to \1.

Thanks for the preg_replace() code, though!

~RESOLVED~