CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregex
Kah
Kah

Reputation: 647

Regex match url without <a> tag - JS

I am looking for a regex expression in JavaScript for the same use case as this post here: regex matching links without <a> tag

My goal is to transform a string such as

Here is a link https://www.somewebsite.com/ here is a link already in an a tag <a href="https://www.somewebsite.com/">https://www.somewebsite.com/</a>

To

Here is a link <a href="https://www.somewebsite.com/">https://www.somewebsite.com/</a> here is a link already in an a tag <a href="https://www.somewebsite.com/">https://www.somewebsite.com/</a>

There are many regex examples for a url, but I am not sure how to add an "and" condition for the url match not being in an <a> tag. I have only found examples so far for php or python, but not JS.

Thank you!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 631

Answers (1)

KevBot
KevBot

Reputation: 18888

Instead of using regex, you can test the URL that was supplied to see if it is treated as an external resource. Here, I split the string by whitespace, then tested each part to see if it is a defined URL.

const string = `Here is a link https://www.somewebsite.com/ here is a link already in an a tag <a href="https://www.somewebsite.com/">https://www.somewebsite.com/</a>`;

const newString = string
  .split(/\s+/)
  .map(string => (isDefinedUrl(string)) ? makeUrl(string) : string)
  .join(' ');

console.log(newString);


function isDefinedUrl(possibleUrl) {
  const a = document.createElement('a');
  a.href = possibleUrl;
  return (possibleUrl === a.href);
}

function makeUrl(url) {
  return `<a href="${url}">${url}</a>`;
}

Upvotes: 3

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