CFLib.org – Common Function Library Project

Description:
when you retrieve a tweet from the Twitter API, the text doesn't have links to mentions(@), hashtags(#), or URLs. This function uses regular expressions to parse the tweet and link to all three types of references.

Return Values:
Returns a string.

Example:

<cfset tweet='@bennadel The www.BenNadel.com job board made its 79th Kiva donation on behalf of "Web Developer" http://bjam.in/jobs-160 ##FullTime ##Jobs ##NJ'>

<cfoutput>

    #twitterify(tweet)#

</cfoutput>

Parameters:

Full UDF Source:

/**
 * Converts hashtags, mentions, and embedded URLs to clickable links.
 * 
 * @param tweet      String to parse. (Required)
 * @return Returns a string. 
 * @author John Venable (johnnykrisma@gmail.com) 
 * @version 1, December 15, 2012 
 */
function twitterify(tweet) {
    tweet = rereplacenocase(tweet, '(^|[\n ])([\w]+?://[\w]+[^ \"\n\r\t< ]*)', '\1<a href="\2" target="_blank">\2</a>', 'ALL');
    tweet = rereplacenocase(tweet, '(^|[\n ])((www|ftp)\.[^ \"\t\n\r< ]*)','\1<a href="http://\2" target="_blank">\2</a>','ALL');
    tweet = rereplacenocase(tweet, '##(\w+)', '<a class="tweet-hashtag" href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=\1" target="_blank">##\1</a>', 'ALL');
    tweet = rereplacenocase(tweet, '@(\w+)', '<a class="tweet-mention" href="http://twitter.com/\1">@\1</a>', 'ALL');
        
    return tweet;
}