For part of my site I wanted to format plain text from a database so that URLs would appear as links in HTML. I am using the following code:

PHP Code:

function link_urls($string) {
  //change single to double quotes (only necessary if you work with databases)
  $string = ereg_replace("\'", "\"", $string);
  //change full stops and question marks that don't need to be linked
  $string = ereg_replace("\? ", " question_mark ", $string);
  $string = ereg_replace("\?\r\n"," question_mark_new_line ", $string);
  $string = ereg_replace("\. ", " full_stop ", $string);
  $string = ereg_replace("\.\r\n"," full_stop_new_line ", $string);
  $string = eregi_replace("(([url]ftp://[/url])|([url]http://[/url])|(www))(([a-z0-9.\-])*)(@)?(([a-z0-9\.])*)(([:/])?)((([a-z0-9]*)(@?)/*)+([.a-z]{2,4}){1})?((\??[a-z0-9\=]*)?)((\&[a-z0-9\=]*)?)(([\.a-z]){2,4})?", "<a href=\"\\0\">\\0</a>", $string);
  //change back dots and question marks
  $string = ereg_replace(" full_stop_new_line ", "\.\r\n", $string);
  $string = ereg_replace(" full_stop", "\.", $string);
  $string = ereg_replace(" question_mark_new_line ", "\?\r\n", $string);
  $string = ereg_replace(" question_mark", "\?", $string);
  return $string;
} 


but I have a problem that it can't cope with dashes in URLs (see

this page for an example.

As I didn't write that code above (and don't really understand how it works) I can't edit it to overcome the problem.

Does anyone know what should be changed and how?

No help with this one yet? Where's all our PHP programmers?

Dave

Sigh

So many regular exprssions its hurting my brain.

Can you tell me EXACTLY What you want it do [as I got confused] and Ill whip something up NP

lol i would help you if i knew more PHP
then again david taught me PHP, so really the student cant help the master
sorry

Thanks for the response AhmedF.

Basically the idea is that I can present my user-entered content better. Users enter the plain text of their questions, which often include links. What I am trying to do is, when I output the data from the database, format the link in the browser so that it is clickable.

That code (which I got from PHPBuilder I think) works for the majority of links, e.g.:
http://www.mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com/apage/
http://www.mysite.com/something/page.htm

but for some reason can't cope with:
http://www.mysite.com/something-else/page.htm
because it stops the link at -

I'd really appreciate it if you could edit that code slightly or make some to do that

I believe that there is some way to skirt past that, since it brings up Quote symbols and such in my PHP Guide but I bet you people have already thought of that.

Yech

I suck with regular exprssions.

BUT ...

try changing '[a-z0-9]'
to :alpha: or :alphanum:

Basically .. teh script is looking for letters a to z, and numbers 0 to 9 ... the '-' is neither ... so it chokes. By telling to to look for 'alphanumeric' instead, it should be able to parse the '-'

If this doesnt work, we can write a bit simpler, and maybe not as fact strpos and str_replace replacement

Thanks for thetip AhmedF, but unfortunately it didn't seem to fix the problem

Any other ideas?

Try changing [a-z0-9] to [a-z0-9.-_~] you should be able to put in any new characters to the expression at this point... I see things link [a-z0-9.-] in there, expand the brackets with new characters (at the end, so it doesn't interfere with your ranges)

Should do the trick, not that I know PHP, but I've done a few regex in my time.