url

Generates an internal or external URL.

When creating links in modules, consider whether l() could be a better alternative than url().

Parameters

$path: The internal path or external URL being linked to, such as "node/34" or "http://example.com/foo". A few notes:

• If you provide a full URL, it will be considered an external URL.
• If you provide only the path (e.g. "node/34"), it will be considered an internal link. In this case, it should be a system URL, and it will be replaced with the alias, if one exists. Additional query arguments for internal paths must be supplied in $options['query'], not included in $path.
• If you provide an internal path and $options['alias'] is set to TRUE, the path is assumed already to be the correct path alias, and the alias is not looked up.
• The special string '<front>' generates a link to the site's base URL.
• If your external URL contains a query (e.g. http://example.com/foo?a=b), then you can either URL encode the query keys and values yourself and include them in $path, or use $options['query'] to let this function URL encode them.

$options: An associative array of additional options, with the following elements:

• 'query': An array of query key/value-pairs (without any URL-encoding) to append to the URL.
• 'fragment': A fragment identifier (named anchor) to append to the URL. Do not include the leading '#' character.
• 'absolute': Defaults to FALSE. Whether to force the output to be an absolute link (beginning with http:). Useful for links that will be displayed outside the site, such as in an RSS feed.
• 'alias': Defaults to FALSE. Whether the given path is a URL alias already.
• 'external': Whether the given path is an external URL.
• 'language': An optional language object. If the path being linked to is internal to the site, $options['language'] is used to look up the alias for the URL. If $options['language'] is omitted, the global $language_url will be used.
• 'https': Whether this URL should point to a secure location. If not defined, the current scheme is used, so the user stays on http or https respectively. TRUE enforces HTTPS and FALSE enforces HTTP, but HTTPS can only be enforced when the variable 'https' is set to TRUE.
• 'base_url': Only used internally, to modify the base URL when a language dependent URL requires so.
• 'prefix': Only used internally, to modify the path when a language dependent URL requires so.
• 'script': The script filename in Drupal's root directory to use when clean URLs are disabled, such as 'index.php'. Defaults to an empty string, as most modern web servers automatically find 'index.php'. If clean URLs are disabled, the value of $path is appended as query parameter 'q' to $options['script'] in the returned URL. When deploying Drupal on a web server that cannot be configured to automatically find index.php, then hook_url_outbound_alter() can be implemented to force this value to 'index.php'.
• 'entity_type': The entity type of the object that called url(). Only set if url() is invoked by entity_uri().
• 'entity': The entity object (such as a node) for which the URL is being generated. Only set if url() is invoked by entity_uri().

Return value

A string containing a URL to the given path.

Related topics

Formatting

Functions to format numbers, strings, dates, etc.

Sanitization functions

Functions to sanitize values.

Input validation

Functions to validate user input.

HTTP handling

Functions to properly handle HTTP responses.

817 calls to url()

304 string references to 'url'

File

drupal/includes/common.inc, line 2068

Common functions that many Drupal modules will need to reference.

Code

function url($path = NULL, array $options = array()) {
  // Merge in defaults.
  $options += array(
    'fragment' => '', 
    'query' => array(), 
    'absolute' => FALSE, 
    'alias' => FALSE, 
    'prefix' => '',
  );

  if (!isset($options['external'])) {
    // Return an external link if $path contains an allowed absolute URL. Only
    // call the slow drupal_strip_dangerous_protocols() if $path contains a ':'
    // before any / ? or #. Note: we could use url_is_external($path) here, but
    // that would require another function call, and performance inside url() is
    // critical.
    $colonpos = strpos($path, ':');
    $options['external'] = ($colonpos !== FALSE && !preg_match('![/?#]!', substr($path, 0, $colonpos)) && drupal_strip_dangerous_protocols($path) == $path);
  }

  // Preserve the original path before altering or aliasing.
  $original_path = $path;

  // Allow other modules to alter the outbound URL and options.
  drupal_alter('url_outbound', $path, $options, $original_path);

  if (isset($options['fragment']) && $options['fragment'] !== '') {
    $options['fragment'] = '#' . $options['fragment'];
  }

  if ($options['external']) {
    // Split off the fragment.
    if (strpos($path, '#') !== FALSE) {
      list($path, $old_fragment) = explode('#', $path, 2);
      // If $options contains no fragment, take it over from the path.
      if (isset($old_fragment) && !$options['fragment']) {
        $options['fragment'] = '#' . $old_fragment;
      }
    }
    // Append the query.
    if ($options['query']) {
      $path .= (strpos($path, '?') !== FALSE ? '&' : '?') . drupal_http_build_query($options['query']);
    }
    if (isset($options['https']) && variable_get('https', FALSE)) {
      if ($options['https'] === TRUE) {
        $path = str_replace('http://', 'https://', $path);
      }
      elseif ($options['https'] === FALSE) {
        $path = str_replace('https://', 'http://', $path);
      }
    }
    // Reassemble.
    return $path . $options['fragment'];
  }

  global $base_url, $base_secure_url, $base_insecure_url;

  // The base_url might be rewritten from the language rewrite in domain mode.
  if (!isset($options['base_url'])) {
    if (isset($options['https']) && variable_get('https', FALSE)) {
      if ($options['https'] === TRUE) {
        $options['base_url'] = $base_secure_url;
        $options['absolute'] = TRUE;
      }
      elseif ($options['https'] === FALSE) {
        $options['base_url'] = $base_insecure_url;
        $options['absolute'] = TRUE;
      }
    }
    else {
      $options['base_url'] = $base_url;
    }
  }

  // The special path '<front>' links to the default front page.
  if ($path == '<front>') {
    $path = '';
  }
  elseif (!empty($path) && !$options['alias']) {
    $language = isset($options['language']) && isset($options['language']->language) ? $options['language']->language : '';
    $alias = drupal_get_path_alias($original_path, $language);
    if ($alias != $original_path) {
      $path = $alias;
    }
  }

  $base = $options['absolute'] ? $options['base_url'] . '/' : base_path();
  $prefix = empty($path) ? rtrim($options['prefix'], '/') : $options['prefix'];

  // With Clean URLs.
  if (!empty($GLOBALS['conf']['clean_url'])) {
    $path = drupal_encode_path($prefix . $path);
    if ($options['query']) {
      return $base . $path . '?' . drupal_http_build_query($options['query']) . $options['fragment'];
    }
    else {
      return $base . $path . $options['fragment'];
    }
  }
  // Without Clean URLs.
  else {
    $path = $prefix . $path;
    $query = array();
    if (!empty($path)) {
      $query['q'] = $path;
    }
    if ($options['query']) {
      // We do not use array_merge() here to prevent overriding $path via query
      // parameters.
      $query += $options['query'];
    }
    $query = $query ? ('?' . drupal_http_build_query($query)) : '';
    $script = isset($options['script']) ? $options['script'] : '';
    return $base . $script . $query . $options['fragment'];
  }
}