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

I explode the string at first as the url might be half way through it e.g. hello how are you www.google.com

Explode the string and use a foreach statement.

Eg:

$string = "hello how are you www.google.com";
$string = explode(" ", $string);
foreach ($string as $word){
  if ( (strpos($word, "http://") === 0) || (strpos($word, "www.") === 0) ){
  // Code you want to excute if string is a link
  }
}

Note you have to use the === operator because strpos can return, will return a 0 which will appear to be false.