CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregexstring
evuazeze
evuazeze

Reputation: 102

Replace Substring Starting With @ Using Regular Expressions

I am new to Regular Expressions and I have been racking my head for hours to solve this

let text = "My twitter handle is @emmy, I follow @jo and @pe"

I need to replace @emmy with <a href="https://twitter.com/emmy">@emmy</a>, likewise anyother string that starts with @ in the string.

Here is something I came up with from searching the internet and reading the docs on MDN

function linkify(text) {
  let regex = /(?:^|\W)@(\w+)(?!\w)/g;
  return text.replace(regex, function(handle) {
    return `<a href="https://twitter.com/${handle.slice(1)}>${handle}</a>`;
})
}

The problem with this solution is that sometimes it omits some text, for example Earlier this week, @emmy featured the best student and dedicated to Earlier this week,

Any input towards a solution will be well appreciated.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 41

Answers (2)

The fourth bird
The fourth bird

Reputation: 163332

If you want to use replace and specify a function as the second parameter, you could use 3 capturing groups to capture the match in front of the @, the @ itself and the name.

In the function add 3 parameters which will correspond to the capturing groups.Then you could use those parameters in the replacement:

(^|\W)(@)(\w+)(?!\w)

Regex demo

let text = "My twitter handle is @emmy, I follow @jo and @pe";

function linkify(text) {
  let regex = /(^|\W)(@)(\w+)(?!\w)/g;
  return text.replace(regex, function(handle, p1, p2, p3) {
    return `${p1}<a href="https://twitter.com/${p3}>${p2}${p3}</a>`;
  });
};

console.log(linkify(text));

Upvotes: 1

Nick
Nick

Reputation: 147166

I don't think you need a callback for this problem, a straight replace should work:

let text = "My twitter handle is @emmy, I follow @jo and @pe";
console.log(text.replace(/(^|\W)@(\w+)\b/g, '$1<a href="https://twitter.com/$2">@$2</a>'));

Upvotes: 1

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