variable passed from controller to phtml template and turned into hyperlink suddenly prefixes w/ controller's url

Question

I'm passing a url string variable from a controller to a phtml file where i'd like to then display it as a hyperlink.

unfortunately, magento seems to prefix the variable data with the controller's url.

so a variable that's passed like this www.something.com is converted to www.mydomain.com/my_controller/www.something.com when calling this in the phtml to create a hyperlink.

 <?php echo "<a href='" . $this->myVar . "'>html link in php</a><p>";?>

if i make a simple call this, it displays the text correctly:

 <?php echo $this->myVar?>

i've tried calling this to strip the added url:

$newURL = str_replace("www.mydomain.com/my_controller/", "", $this->myVar, $count);

but php doesn't seem to find the substring and count = 0.

seems like magento is adding the controller's url automatically, which is not what i need.

this is how i'm rendering the page.

    $this->loadLayout();             
    $this->getLayout()->getBlock('root')->setTemplate('page/1column.phtml');    

    $block = $this->getLayout()->createBlock(
        'Mage_Core_Block_Template',
        'blockname',
        array('template' => 'NamespaceName_ModuleName/links.phtml')
    )
    ->setData('var', 'www.something.com');

    $this->getLayout()->getBlock('content')->append($block);
    $this->_initLayoutMessages('core/session');
    $this->renderLayout();

Any ideas?

Answer 1

This is URL 101. You have not specified http:// in front of the link, so the browser tries to append it to the current location.