Inserting href tags

Anon

I have a database app that reads a text field that sometimes includes URLs. Is there a way to easily search through the text field, and add <a href=$found_url>$found_url</a> when it is printed to the client? I will be doing this for http:// ftp:// and mailto: type links, but I mainly need help finding the $found_url variable in the midst of the text.

Anon

Here is some code that I've been using to do that:

ereg_replace("http://(([A-Za-z0-9.=?/\&-]))([a-zA-z0-9/])", "<a href=\"\0\">\0</a>", $text);

hope that helps!

Chris King

Anon

If there are no links already embedded (as html), the code Chris posted should work nicely. I needed to avoid valid HTML while transforming visible links, so this is what I'm using.

// function to transform links and emails into clickable html
function makelinks($input)
{
// first get http:// and etc
$input = eregi_replace("[^{\"](http://[[:alnum:]#?/&=.,]*)",}
" <a href=\"\1\">\1</a>",
$input);
// and at the beginning of a line
$input = eregi_replace("(^{[a-z]://[[:alnum:]#?/&=.,])",}
" <a href=\"\1\">\1</a>",
$input);
// then get the email@hosts
$input = eregi_replace("(([a-z0-9_]|\-|\.)+@([^{[:space:]]*)([[:alnum:]-]))",}
"<a href=\"mailto:\1\">\1</a>", $input);
return($input);
}

Anon

Hi,
I'm working on a guestbook/forum and Chris King's way should work just fine whenever the people post "correct" urls in their messages, i.e. "http://www.google.com".

But when he/she only enters "www.google.com" without the preceeding protocol:// - no automatic url will be printed to the client.

Is there a way of making use of these two options? How is it done in regex?

Thanx in advance.