get_url_in_content() │ WP 3.6.0

Extracts and returns the first URL found in the given string.

The function scans the given text for links: it looks for a URL in the href attribute of the HTML <a> tag.

It searches only for the first link. If there are several in the text, the others will be ignored.

Before returning, the URL is cleaned using sanitize_url() for security.

Uses: sanitize_url()

No Hooks.

Returns

String|false.

  • string — The found URL.
  • false — If no URL is found in the content.

Usage

get_url_in_content( $content );
$content(string) (required)
The string in which to find a link and extract the URL from.

Examples

0

#1 Check for absence of URL

If there are no links in the text, the function will return false.

$content = 'This is just text without any links.';
$url = get_url_in_content( $content );

if ( ! $url ) {
	echo 'No links found in the text.';
}

// Output: No links found in the text.
0

#2 Demo

In this example we get the first link from a regular string.

$text = '
Visit our main site https://example.com and our blog 
<a href="https://blog.example.com">blog.example.com</a>.
';
$url = get_url_in_content( $text ); //> https://blog.example.com

Changelog

Since 3.6.0 Introduced.

get_url_in_content() code WP 6.8.3

wp-includes/formatting.php 
function get_url_in_content( $content ) {
	if ( empty( $content ) ) {
		return false;
	}

	if ( preg_match( '/<a\s[^>]*?href=([\'"])(.+?)\1/is', $content, $matches ) ) {
		return sanitize_url( $matches[2] );
	}

	return false;
}

Supporting (helper utility auxiliary)

Helper Functions