php - Check if variable starts with 'http'

Question

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 1

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