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 used this below which allows you to detect url's anywhere in a string. For my particular application it's a contact form to combat spam so no url's are allowed. Works very well.

Link to resource: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/php/find-urls-in-text-make-links/

My implementation;

 1000) {
$messageError = "1000 chars max";
}
$reg_exUrl = "/(http|https|ftp|ftps)\:\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(\/\S*)?/";
if (preg_match($reg_exUrl, $message)) {
$messageError = "Url's not allowed";
}

// Validate data
function test_input($data) {
$data = trim($data);
$data = stripslashes($data);
$data = htmlspecialchars($data);
return $data;
}
?>