Are there best practices for validating user input in PHP to prevent the inclusion of hyperlinks?

When validating user input in PHP to prevent the inclusion of hyperlinks, you can use regular expressions to check if the input contains any URLs or hyperlinks. By defining a regular expression pattern that matches URLs, you can easily detect and reject any input that includes hyperlinks. This can help prevent potential security risks or unwanted links in your application. 

$input = $_POST['user_input'];

// Define a regular expression pattern to match URLs
$pattern = '/(http|https):\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9\-.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}(\/\S*)?/';

// Check if the input contains any URLs
if (preg_match($pattern, $input)) {
    // Input contains a URL, handle the error or reject the input
    echo "Error: Hyperlinks are not allowed.";
} else {
    // Input is valid, continue processing
    // Your code here
}

Keywords

user input validation PHP hyperlinks security

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