RegExp: Problems with matching a(ny) URI

[Jesper Stocholm]

I need to be able to detect URIs in some text and after this replace
dem with HTML-anchors, that is

http://www.tempuri.org/page.html

should be replaced with

<a href="http://www.tempuri.org/page.html">http ://www.tempuri.org/page.html</a>

I have made the following code:

re = new RegExp('(((http |https|ftp):\/\/)?\w+[.\w]+([^\w]*[\s]+))');
str = document.forms[0].longtext.value ; //textarea with text to replace
newstr = str.replace(re, '<a href="$1">$1</a>');
document.write( newstr);

However, it doesn't quite work as I would like it to. It seems to only
make a single match, and it seems to ingore leading and trailing
whitespaces.

Can you help me solving this?

I test of the code I have so far can be found at

http://www.stocholm.dk/test/html/regexp.html

Thanks,

:o)

--
Jesper Stocholm - http://stocholm.dk
Copenhagen, Denmark

[Janwillem Borleffs]

Re: RegExp: Problems with matching a(ny) URI


"Jesper Stocholm" <jespers@stocho lm.invalid> schreef in bericht
news:Xns93D7D79 E735D5stocholmd k@130.226.1.34. ..[color=blue]
> I need to be able to detect URIs in some text and after this replace
> dem with HTML-anchors, that is[/color]
....[color=blue]
> I have made the following code:
>
> re = new RegExp('(((http |https|ftp):\/\/)?\w+[.\w]+([^\w]*[\s]+))');[/color]
....[color=blue]
> However, it doesn't quite work as I would like it to. It seems to only
> make a single match, and it seems to ingore leading and trailing
> whitespaces.[/color]

Try this regexp:

re = /(http|https|ftp )([^ ]+)/ig;

(The i at the end means ignore case, the g means global for multiple
matches)

This doesn't allow spaces in URL's (which isn't allowed anyway).


JW

[Janwillem Borleffs]

Re: RegExp: Problems with matching a(ny) URI


"Janwillem Borleffs" <jwb@jwbfoto.de mon.nl> schreef in bericht
news:3f3be68c$0 $28912$1b62eedf @news.euronet.n l...[color=blue]
>
> Try this regexp:
>
> re = /(http|https|ftp )([^ ]+)/ig;
>[/color]

Forgot to mention that the replacement should be done as follows:

newstr = str.replace(re, '<a href="$1$2">$1$ 2</a>');


JW

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

Re: RegExp: Problems with matching a(ny) URI

Jesper Stocholm <jespers@stocho lm.invalid> writes:
[color=blue]
> I need to be able to detect URIs in some text and after this replace
> dem with HTML-anchors,[/color]
[color=blue]
> I have made the following code:
>
> re = new RegExp('(((http |https|ftp):\/\/)?\w+[.\w]+([^\w]*[\s]+))');[/color]
....[color=blue]
> However, it doesn't quite work as I would like it to.[/color]

Step back from the technical part and answer this question:
What is an URL?
or more precisely:
What will you accept as an URL?
(The formal definition is in RFC2396
<URL:http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc2396.html>)

If you can answer it, in detail, then I bet it is easier to make a
regular expression to match it (or get help doing it, because then
the job is precisely specified).

/L
--
Lasse Reichstein Nielsen - lrn@hotpop.com
Art D'HTML: <URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/randomArtSplit. html>
'Faith without judgement merely degrades the spirit divine.'