php regex get first URL from string

Question

I'm using the following regex in PHP to grab the URLs from a string

regex = '/https?\:\/\/[^\" ]+/i';
$string = "lorem ipsum http://google.com lorem ipusm dolor http://yahoo.com/something";
preg_match_all($regex, $string, $matches);
$urls = ($matches[0]);

$urls returns all the URLs. How can return only the first URL? In this case http://google.com.

I'm trying to achieve this without using a foreach loop.

possible duplicate of [Finding urls from text string via php and regex?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6127545/finding-urls-from-text-string-via-php-and-regex) — Lalit Sharma, Jan 28 '15 at 13:19
@CyberJunkie an improved version would be `'~https?://[^" ]+~i'` — HamZa, Jan 28 '15 at 13:32

npinti · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-28T13:27:07.913

9

According to the documentation:

preg_match_all — Perform a global regular expression match

Since you are after just one, you should be using preg_match:

Perform a regular expression match

$regex = '/https?\:\/\/[^\" ]+/i';
$string = "lorem ipsum http://google.com lorem ipusm dolor http://yahoo.com/something";
preg_match($regex, $string, $matches);
echo $matches[0];

Yields:

http://google.com

edited Jan 28 '15 at 13:27

answered Jan 28 '15 at 13:20

npinti

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 28 '15 at 13:19

1

Use preg_match instead of preg_match_all

answered Jan 28 '15 at 13:19

Bart Haalstra

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 28 '15 at 13:34

preg_match_all() has a flag parameter which you can use to order the results. The parameter in which you have the variable $matches is your results and should be listed in that array.

$matches[0][0];//is your first item.
$matches[0][1];//is your second

It would be better to use preg_match() rather than preg_match_all().

Here's the documentation on preg_match_all() for your flags. Link here!

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 28 '15 at 13:19

^.*?(https?\:\/\/[^\" ]+)

Try this.Grab the capture or group.See demo.

https://regex101.com/r/pM9yO9/5

$re = "/^.*?(https?\\:\\/\\/[^\\\" ]+)/";
$str = "lorem ipsum http://google.com lorem ipusm dolor http://yahoo.com/something";

preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches);

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 28 '15 at 13:19

Just print the 0th index.

$regex = '/https?\:\/\/[^\" ]+/i';
$string = "lorem ipsum http://google.com lorem ipusm dolor http://yahoo.com/something";
preg_match_all($regex, $string, $matches);
$urls = ($matches[0]);
print_r($urls[0]);

Output:

http://google.com

php regex get first URL from string

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