Extracting link from a href and putting it within brackets - php

Question

I have searched and couldn't find what I was looking for.
This is how it will normally be:
<p>
Hi how are you? Have you checked Google or YouTube?
</p>
But what I would love to have, because I'm willing to apply this on a print or PDF page is the following:
<p>
Hi how are you? Have you checked Google (http://www.google.com)
or YouTube (http://www.youtube.com)?
</p>
Now, I understand that there should be some work with regex, but I don't know how to use that. The text will be taken from the variable $content which has the article in it, and what I would like to have is that all links within $content remain as they are plus the content of href be as an additional hyperlink within brackets "()" so that, hypothetically when someone reads a printed article where hyperlinks are they would be able to see the actual URL.

Answer 1

Use a pseudo element to add the href after your links, something like:
a[href]:after
{
content: " (" attr(href) ") ";
}

Answer 2

Here is a handy little Function that may suffice.
<?php
/**#var string $strInput THE STRING TO BE FILTERED */
function doubleUpOnURL($strInput){
$arrAnchorSplit = preg_split("#<\/a>#", $strInput);
$strOutput = "";
$anchorRegX = '(<a\s*href=[\'\"])(.+)([\'\"]>)(.*)';
foreach($arrAnchorSplit as $anchoredString){
$strOutput .= preg_replace("#" . $anchorRegX . "#si" , "$1$2$3$4</a> ($1$2$3$2</a>)", $anchoredString);
}
return $strOutput;
}
$strInput = '<p>Hi how are you? Have you checked Google or YouTube?</p>';
echo(doubleUpOnURL($strInput));
//OUTPUTS:
// Hi how are you? Have you checked Google (http://www.google.com) or YouTube (http://www.youtube.com)?
I hope you find it helpful...