PHP Regular Expression Text URL to HTML Link

Question

I'm working on a project where I need to replace text urls anywhere from domain.com to www.domain.com to http(s)://www.domain.com and e-mail addresses to the proper html <a> tag. I was using a great solution in the past, but it used the now depreciated eregi_replace function. On top of that, the regular expression used for such function does not work with preg_replace.

So basically, the user inputs a message in which may/may not contain a link/e-mail address and I need a regular expression that works with preg_replace to replace that link/email with a HTML link like <a href="link">link</a>.

Please note that I have multiple other preg_replaces too. Below is my current code for the other replacements being made.

$patterns = array('~\[@([^\]]*)\]~','~\[([^\]]*)\]~','~{([^}]*)}~','~_([^_]*)_~','/\s{2}/');
$replacements = array('<b class="reply">@\\1</b>','<b>\\1</b>','<i>\\1</i>','<u>\\1</u>','<br />');
$msg = preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $msg);
return stripslashes(utf8_encode($msg));

Luke Stevenson · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-23 15:02:31Z

6

I have created a very basic set of Regular Expressions for this. Don't expect them to be 100% reliable, and you may need to tweak them as you go.

$pattern = array(
  '/((?:[\w\d]+\:\/\/)?(?:[\w\-\d]+\.)+[\w\-\d]+(?:\/[\w\-\d]+)*(?:\/|\.[\w\-\d]+)?(?:\?[\w\-\d]+\=[\w\-\d]+\&?)?(?:\#[\w\-\d]*)?)/' , # URL
  '/([\w\-\d]+\@[\w\-\d]+\.[\w\-\d]+)/' , # Email
  '/\[@([^\]]*)\]/' , # Reply
  '/\[([^\]]*)\]/' , # Bold
  '/\{([^}]*)\}/' , # Italics 
  '/_([^_]*)_/' , # Underline
  '/\s{2}/' , # Linebreak
);
$replace = array(
  '<a href="$1">$1</a>' ,
  '<a href="mailto:$1">$1</a>' ,
  '<b class="reply">@$1</b>' ,
  '<b>$1</b>' ,
  '<i>$1</i>' ,
  '<u>$1</u>' ,
  '<br />'
);
$msg = preg_replace( $pattern , $replace , $msg );
return stripslashes( utf8_encode( $msg ) );

edited May 23, 2011 at 15:02

answered Oct 21, 2010 at 2:10

Luke Stevenson

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3 Comments

Kyle Ross Over a year ago

Excellent man! You know what you are doing! I appreciate your help with this one.

Steven Mercatante Over a year ago

quick note - add a semicolon after the closing ) for $replace.

vallentin Over a year ago

@Lucanos this is great, but the url one, doesn't support parenthesis.

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