Check if variable starts with 'http'

php substring string-comparison
Andelas picture Andelas · Dec 12, 2010 · Viewed 34.9k times · Source

I'm sure this is a simple solution, just haven't found exactly what I needed.

Using php, i have a variable $source. I wanna check if $source starts with 'http'. 

if ($source starts with 'http') {
 $source = "<a href='$source'>$source</a>";
}

Thanks!

Answer

Jonah picture Jonah · Dec 12, 2010 
if (strpos($source, 'http') === 0) {
    $source = "<a href=\"$source\">$source</a>";
}

Note I use ===, not == because strpos returns boolean false if the string does not contain the match. Zero is falsey in PHP, so a strict equality check is necessary to remove ambiguity.

Reference:

http://php.net/strpos

http://php.net/operators.comparison

Related questions

How do I check if a string contains a specific word?

Consider: $a = 'How are you?'; if ($a contains 'are') echo 'true'; Suppose I have the code above, what is the correct way to write the statement if ($a contains 'are')?

Read More
How to get first 5 characters from string

How to get first 5 characters from string using php $myStr = "HelloWordl"; result should be like this $result = "Hello";

Read More
Getting the first character of a string with $str[0]

I want to get the first letter of a string and I've noticed that $str[0] works great. I am just not sure whether this is 'good practice', as that notation is generally used with arrays. This feature doesn't seem to …

Read More