[RESOLVED] If statement and output data as link

melaniet

Hello,
Our php programmer no longer works here and I need to fix a bug on one of our intranet pages. I am mostly just a web and graphic designer and I am pretty good at mucking around in code, but haven't spent much time with php at all. I tried looking around for the answer to this in a couple books and on forums. A few things I read said I needed to escape quotes. Which I tried, but just keep getting errors and I think the if statment is messing me up.

Here's what I am working on....
If my database has an entry like www.google.com, how do I get it to output this as a link?

Here's the current code without the link output:
<? if ($news['news_website'] != "http://")
{
echo $news['news_website'];
}
?>

I know I will get better at this, so thanks in advance for your helping educate me!

alimadzi

melaniet wrote:
If my database has an entry like www.google.com, how do I get it to output this as a link?

Here's the current code without the link output:
<? if ($news['news_website'] != "http://")
{
echo $news['news_website'];
}
?>

I know I will get better at this, so thanks in advance for your helping educate me!

So you have a table of Web addresses and some of them start with 'http://' and some of them don't? But you want all the links you create to start with 'http://'? If so, I can post the code you need. Basically just using preg_match() to test if the website starts with 'http://' or not and adding it if it doesn't. If I'm misunderstanding the question, then let me know. Thanks.

melaniet

Hi
Good question
The website entries are inputted thru a form by a user and can sometimes have http:// and/or just the www

I think the programmer was mostly trying to check to see if the record had http:// to verify it was a website and/or not empty then display it. But I would like it to be a clickable link and right now it just displays as text.

At some point it would be good to have it check if the user entered the url correctly, but because I am such a beginner, I think, the simpler, the better. Unless you think it might be fairly easy for me to comprend?

thanks

alimadzi

I would recommend the following changes to start...

<?php

if ( !preg_match( "/^(http:\/\/)/", $news['news_website'] ) ) {
  $news['news_website'] = 'http://' . $news['news_website'];
}

?>

That will check for an 'http://' at the front of each link and add them if necessary.

melaniet

Very helpful thanks,
but any idea how do I get my <a href=" "></a> tag in there without getting a parse error?

alimadzi

melaniet wrote:
Very helpful thanks,
but any idea how do I get my <a href=" "></a> tag in there without getting a parse error?

Sure, do this (both will work)...

// use curly braces with single ticks around your column names
echo "<a href=\"{$news['news_website']}\">{$news['site_name']}</a>";

// or drop the curly braces and the single ticks
echo "<a href=\"$news[news_website]\">$news[site_name]</a>";

I was just using 'site_name' as an example. Substitute whatever your column name happens to be.

melaniet

Oh wow,
thanks so much. I tried getting the syntax riht on my own and it was really making me cross-eyed. But I tihnk I see what I was missing now. Thanks again!