Automatically turning a plain text URL into a link - search and replace?

rewen

Heya, this is my first time posting or even visiting these forums.

I am trying to make a script that will scan though a news post stored in MySQL, and turn urls into links.

I can't seem to find a way to do this.

I imagine it would have to start storing characters into a variable once 'http' is found, then stop when it reaches a space. Once that's done I can do an eregi_replace to find that in the text and replace it with <a href= $variable target=_blank>$variable</a>

Any help is greatly appreciated.

ir4z0r

tested and seems to work:

$enw = eregi_replace("([url]http://[/url][^ ]*)", "<a href='\1'>\1</a>",$old);

rewen

Thanx! It works fine, but is there a way to make it so that if there is a newline (\r\n|\n|\r) OR a space, it will stop?

Also If there is already a link with HTML coding, is there a way to make it not recreate the link from that?

Im just getting into PHP :rolleyes:

rewen

OK, i've found this on PHP.net as an example for ereg_replace:

$text = ereg_replace("[[:alpha:]]+://[^{<>[:space:]]+[[:alnum:]/]","<a} href=\"\0\">\0</a>", $text);

Now it works a bit better, it doesn't mess up the links that already had HTML code visually, but it still messes up the links and images

Can someone explain to me how I can make it skip over the ones that already have <a href and <img in the code?

xblue

it's not easy. one way might be: assume that if it is followed by an opening angular bracket without a closing angular bracket in between, it is not within a tag.

then you could use the lookahead capabilities of preg_replace, like
"#$yourpattern(?=[^>]*<)#i"

ir4z0r

hi, I've tried a little, this is the result (easier than I thought)

$new = eregi_replace("([^{=].)[url]http://[/url]([} \n\r]*)", "\1<a href='http://\2'>\2</a>",$old);

please test it and tell what works [not]

basically it checks whether there's a = and another char (maybe " or ')
in front of the [url]http://[/url]

rewen

razor I used yours and it works but still gets images messed up.

here is one spcific instance:

becomes

<img src=<a href='http://members.fortunecity.com/kahunavids/magico.jpg>'>members.fortunecity.com/kahunavids/magico.jpg></a>

I'll try what xblue said and will mess with yours a little

rewen

Ok I almost have it, now images work:

$new = eregi_replace("([^{=.])[url]http://[/url]([} \n\r]*)", "\1<a href='http://\2'>\2</a>",$old);

I just moved the period into the ]
I was reading on regular expressions and now it's all making sense :p

rewen

Ok, instead of my posting every 5 mins, I'm going to show u the source of what Im trying to get this to run though:

1 http://www.test.com
2 <a href = http://www.test.com>test</a>
3 <a href=http://www.test.com>test</a>
4 <a href = " http://www.test.com">test</a>
5 <a href="http://www.test.com">test</a>
6 <img src=http://members.fortunecity.com/kahunavids/magico.jpg>
7 <img src = http://members.fortunecity.com/kahunavids/magico.jpg>
8 <img src="http://members.fortunecity.com/kahunavids/magico.jpg">
9 <img src = "http://members.fortunecity.com/kahunavids/magico.jpg">

So far I've evolved the script to:

$newnewsdisp = eregi_replace("([^{=.'\"])[url]http://[/url]([} \n\r]*)", "\1<a href='http://\2' target='_blank'>\2</a>",$Vb4a88417['news']);

Right now only 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9 are working. It seems to just be the ones with a space that won't co-operate

ir4z0r

have you noticed that the board script replaces only links with a space
in front? 😃

the easiest way would be to replace the (.) in the first class ([ ])
with a space ( ).

but this would produce more problems, cause a normal
"blabla bla http://bla.de" wouldn't be recognized!

I suggest to leave out this problem, users just have to adapt to this
cause there wil be always exceptions (spaces won't be used by most users)

btw. the dot (.) outside the [ ] symbolizes any char, inside the [ ]
just a dot (.), hence remove it

rewen

Yea I edited my post to say I got it working nicely but It didn't sound as if I was happy with it, sorry :p

and I figured out how to make it work with the space in front too, but I'm just going to leave it as is 🙂

THANX FOR ALL THE HELP!