PHP if string contains URL isolate it

Question

In PHP, I need to be able to figure out if a string contains a URL. If there is a URL, I need to isolate it as another separate string.

For example: \"SESAC showin t

Answer 1

this doesn't account for dashes -. needed to add -

preg_match('/[a-zA-Z]+:\/\/[0-9a-zA-Z;.\/\-?:@=_#&%~,+$]+/', $_POST['string'], $matches);