How can I turn plain URLs in a string into clickable hyperlinks with PHP?

Linking URLs in Strings with PHP

Linking URLs in strings can be a useful task in PHP for tasks such as generating clickable links in textual content. One common use case is converting a plain string containing URLs into HTML with clickable hyperlinks.

Syntax:

<code class="php">$string = preg_replace(
  "~[[:alpha:]]+://[^&lt;&gt;[:space:]]+[[:alnum:]/]~",
  "&lt;a href=\&quot;\0\&quot;&gt;\0&lt;/a&gt;",
  $string
);</code>

Explanation:

• Regex Pattern: The pattern used in preg_replace matches strings starting with a protocol prefix (e.g., "http://") followed by one or more alphanumeric characters, excluding angle brackets and whitespace. It ends with alphanumeric characters or a slash.
• Replacement String: The replacement string includes HTML markup to create an anchor (<a>) tag with the matched URL as the href attribute and the original URL as the text content.

Example:

<code class="php">$input = "Look on http://www.google.com";
$output = preg_replace(
  "~[[:alpha:]]+://[^&lt;&gt;[:space:]]+[[:alnum:]/]~",
  "&lt;a href=\&quot;\0\&quot;&gt;\0&lt;/a&gt;",
  $input
);

echo $output; // Output: "Look on &lt;a href=\&quot;http://www.google.com\&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com&lt;/a&gt;"</code>

PHP Versions:

This solution is compatible with both PHP versions prior to 5.3 (using ereg_replace) and PHP 5.3 and later (using preg_replace).

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