Detecting a url using preg_match? without http:// in the string

Question

I was wondering how I could check a string broken into an array against a preg_match to see if it started with www. I already have one that check for http://www.

Answer 1

You want something like:

%^((https?://)|(www\.))([a-z0-9-].?)+(:[0-9]+)?(/.*)?$%i

this is using the | to match either http:// or www at the beginning. I changed the delimiter to % to avoid clashing with the |