Converting Relative URLs to Absolute URLs in PHP

We needed to convert relative URLs to absolute URLs inside CSS files for our upcoming plugin Combinator.

There are a lot of code floating online that partially worked. The one that was closest was from http://99webtools.com/blog/convert-relative-path-into-absolute-url/. Here’s the reworked version that works great in PHP 5.3+

function rel2abs( $rel, $base ) {

	// parse base URL  and convert to local variables: $scheme, $host,  $path
	extract( parse_url( $base ) );

	if ( strpos( $rel,"//" ) === 0 ) {
		return $scheme . ':' . $rel;
	}

	// return if already absolute URL
	if ( parse_url( $rel, PHP_URL_SCHEME ) != '' ) {
		return $rel;
	}

	// queries and anchors
	if ( $rel[0] == '#' || $rel[0] == '?' ) {
		return $base . $rel;
	}

	// remove non-directory element from path
	$path = preg_replace( '#/[^/]*$#', '', $path );

	// destroy path if relative url points to root
	if ( $rel[0] ==  '/' ) {
		$path = '';
	}

	// dirty absolute URL
	$abs = $host . $path . "/" . $rel;

	// replace '//' or  '/./' or '/foo/../' with '/'
	$abs = preg_replace( "/(\/\.?\/)/", "/", $abs );
	$abs = preg_replace( "/\/(?!\.\.)[^\/]+\/\.\.\//", "/", $abs );

	// absolute URL is ready!
	return $scheme . '://' . $abs;
}

Usage

rel2abs( '../images/image.jpg', 'http://gambit.ph/css/style.css' );
// Outputs http://gambit.ph/images/image.jpg