Weborum Webmaster Forum > Text to Link using Regular Expressions

Full Version: Text to Link using Regular Expressions

Weborum Webmaster Forum > Web Page Design > PHP

toad78

Mar 4 2008, 07:04 PM

I've been advised to use regular expressions when search a string of text in order to create a link from it.

My situation: I have text coming from a database table and within that db table is a paragraph of text that includes a web address.

I was given this to use, but don't know where exactly to put it and if this will actually work:

PHP Code:

CODE

<?php
function hyperlink($text) {
 // match protocol://address/path/file.extension?some=variable&another=asf%
 $text = preg_replace("/\s([a-zA-Z]+:\/\/[a-z][a-z0-9\_\.\-]*
 [a-z]{2,6}[a-zA-Z0-9\/\*\-\?\&\%]*)([\s|\.|\,])/i",
 " <a href=\"$1\" target=\"_blank\">$1</a>$2", $text);
 // match www.something.domain/path/file.extension?some=variable&another=asf%
 $text = preg_replace("/\s(www\.[a-z][a-z0-9\_\.\-]*
 [a-z]{2,6}[a-zA-Z0-9\/\*\-\?\&\%]*)([\s|\.|\,])/i",
 " <a href=\"http://$1\" target=\"_blank\">$1</a>$2", $text);
 // match name@address
 $text = preg_replace("/\s([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\_\.\-]*[a-zA-Z]*
 \@[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\_\.\-]*[a-zA-Z]{2,6})([\s|\.|\,])/i",
 " <a href=\"mailto://$1\">$1</a>$2", $text);
 return $text;
}
?>

My HTML:
Code:

CODE

<?php echo nl2br($row_recent_event['description']); ?>

I would appreciate any suggestions!
toad78

Waleed

Mar 5 2008, 12:20 PM

Hi toad78, welcome to Weborum!

That function looks like it should work, though I can't test it right now.

To make it work, you need to run the text from the database through the function.

CODE

$linked = hyperlink($row_recent_event['description']);

<?php echo nl2br($linked); ?>

The above code takes the result from the database and runs it through the function (that searches for and formats links), then puts it in a new variable named linked. Then, the text in linked is echo'd inside the tags.

Of course, you need to put in the function code somewhere in the page before you use the above code.

Hope that explains it!

This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.