Laravel add http to urls

Question

Is there a helper in Laravel 5.0 that automatically adds http to a url without it? This is similar to codeigniter\'s prep_url that could be found here.

Answer 1

No but you can add it yourself. In your composer.json file add a files key under autoload and point it your helper file e.g.

"autoload": {
    "files": [
        "app/helpers.php"
    ]
}

Then create app/helpers.php with the code (lifted from https://github.com/bcit-ci/CodeIgniter/blob/master/system/helpers/url_helper.php):

<?php

if ( ! function_exists('prep_url'))
{
    /**
     * Prep URL
     *
     * Simply adds the http:// part if no scheme is included
     *
     * @param   string  the URL
     * @return  string
     */
    function prep_url($str = '')
    {
        if ($str === 'http://' OR $str === '')
        {
            return '';
        }
        $url = parse_url($str);
        if ( ! $url OR ! isset($url['scheme']))
        {
            return 'http://'.$str;
        }
        return $str;
    }
}

Now you have prep_url globally accessible! Don't forget to run a composer dump-autoload too.