[Resolved] finding links

sicksound

hey there!

does anyone know of a function i can use to search a blob of text and make HTML links out of any string starting with "http://"?

thanks!

bretticus

There are functions to help you accomplish this. Mainly the PHP regular expression functions. Here's one I wrote awhile back:

function makeLinks($db_body)
{
	return eregi_replace ( "((ht|f)tps?://[^[:blank:]\r\n]+)", "<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"\\0\">\\0</a>", $db_body);
}

That was a few years ago, so I hope it's not buggy, but if it is, you'll soon be a regex pro and you can fix it ;-)

P.S. Yeah, pattern is a triffle n00bie but as I recall, it got the job done ;-)

sicksound

thanks a lot!

my only problem is that i've never delt with regular expressions. do you know any good tutorial sites? i know, i should know..

thanks!

bretticus

do you know any good tutorial sites? i know, i should know..

I have known seasoned developers who didn't have a clue about regular expressions (they were doing things the hard way.) So everybody needs to learn them some time.

As for the tutorial, the PHP manual should be pretty decent (unless you need a basic intro to regular expressions which I believe you could if you do a search engine query.)

PHP Regular expressions

sicksound

thanks so much!

i finally got it, and it works great!

woo, reg expressions are awesome!!