Output php URL as a bootstrap button only - php

Question

First and foremost excuse me, I'm totally new to PHP.
I'm looking to echo a link back to the comic's description/home page currently being read on my site as a clickable bootstrap button with a font awesome icon assigned to it. But, I'm not entirely sure how would I go about doing that.
I'm using a comic reader software; here's the php code that outputs the link to the comic's home page
<?php echo $comic->url() ?>
This is the code I've used to output the link inside a bootstrap button with a font awesome icon:
<button type="button" class="btn btn-danger"><i class="fa fa-level-up"><?php echo $comic->url()?></i></button>
What happens here is that the url is outputted as a clickable text link using the comic's title inside the button. I'm trying to learn how to have the link phrased as a button only.
Live example: of the button
Thanks a lot,

Answer 1

See the Comic model so you know what $comic is set to.
You're using $comic->url() which runs:
public function url()
{
return '' . $this->title() . '';
}
But if you only want the href part, the above function calls this method:
public function href()
{
return site_url('series/' . $this->stub);
}
So your solution is as simple as:
<?= $comic->href() ?>

Answer 2

After looking at your site , i saw that , coming <?php echo $comic->url()?> is doing echo of link with anchor tag as well , then i did visit the comic reader's repository on github , and explored the code files and i found that there are two type of linking system :
$comic->url(); - this echo the link with anchor tag
$comic->href(); - this echo only the link that you need , in your case
and for title echo you can use the below
<?php echo $comic->title();?>
You can create an anchor tag and give that anchor tag the classes that you have given to the button and use $comic->href(); to get only the link that you need.
<a href="<?php echo $comic->href();?>" class="btn btn-danger">
<i class="fa fa-level-up"></i><?php echo $comic->title();?>
</a>
as Rohit kishore suggested , you can also try to use echo strip_tags($comic->url()) if you have to use $comic->url();
<i class="fa fa-level-up"><?php echo $comic->title();?></i>