Hi, I searched high and low but couldnt find any tool or code which simply changes plain text links into clickable html links - if anybody knows anything please let me know - thanks in advance

Maybe I should hold a masterclass on using Search Engines
http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=p...e+text+to+link

http://www.totallyphp.co.uk/code/con...hyperlinks.htm

This should do it:

PHP Code:

$text = 'blah blah http://google.com blah blah blah blah';

echo preg_replace('/(?#Protocol)(?:(?:ht|f)tp(?:s?)\:\/\/|~\/|\/)?(?#Username:Password)(?:\w+:\w+@)?(?#Subdomains)(?:(?:[-\w]+\.)+(?#TopLevel Domains)(?:com|org|net|gov|mil|biz|info|mobi|name|aero|jobs|museum|travel|[a-z]{2}))(?#Port)(?::[\d]{1,5})?(?#Directories)(?:(?:(?:\/(?:[-\w~!$+|.,=]|%[a-f\d]{2})+)+|\/)+|\?|#)?(?#Query)(?:(?:\?(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:]|%[a-f\d{2}])+=?(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:=]|%[a-f\d]{2})*)(?:&(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:]|%[a-f\d{2}])+=?(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:=]|%[a-f\d]{2})*)*)*(?#Anchor)(?:#(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:=]|%[a-f\d]{2})*)?/i', '<a href="$0">$0</a>', $text); 


Edit: Chris beat me to it

The function on the page he linked to uses ereg functions, which are deprecated. Here is a version using preg_replace instead:

PHP Code:

function makeClickableLinks($text) { 

  $text = preg_replace('/(((f|ht){1}tp:\/\/)[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&\/\/=]+)/i', 
    '<a href="\\1">\\1</a>', $text); 
  $text = preg_replace('/([[:space:]()[{}])(www.[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&\/\/=]+)/i', 
    '\\1<a href="http://\\2">\\2</a>', $text); 
  $text = preg_replace('/([_\.0-9a-z-]+@([0-9a-z][0-9a-z-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,3})/i', 
    '<a href="mailto:\\1">\\1</a>', $text); 
   
return $text; 

}

$text = 'blah blah http://google.com blah blah';

echo makeClickableLinks($text); 


The huge OR statement in the regular expression is not needed (com|org|net|gov|mil|biz|info|mobi|name|aero|jobs|m useum|travel|), and is inadequate. I already see several that are missing, and after all, you never know when new top-level domains will be added.

Here's the one I last used:

@(https?://([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?)?)?)@