CFLib.org – Common Function Library Project

Description:
This function takes URLs in a text string and turns them into links. The entire string will be returned with the additional <a href> tags

Return Values:
Returns a string.

Example:

<cfset inputString = "This is a string that has a URL in it, http://www.cflib.org/ so we want that URL to be a link">
<cfoutput>#ActivateURL(inputString)#</cfoutput>

Parameters:

Full UDF Source:

/**
 * This function takes URLs in a text string and turns them into links.
 * Version 2 by Lucas Sherwood, lucas@thebitbucket.net.
 * Version 3 Updated to allow for ;
 * 
 * @param string      Text to parse. (Required)
 * @param target      Optional target for links. Defaults to "". (Optional)
 * @param paragraph      Optionally add paragraphFormat to returned string. (Optional)
 * @return Returns a string. 
 * @author Joel Mueller (jmueller@swiftk.com) 
 * @version 3, August 11, 2004 
 */
function ActivateURL(string) {
    var nextMatch = 1;
    var objMatch = "";
    var outstring = "";
    var thisURL = "";
    var thisLink = "";
    var    target = IIf(arrayLen(arguments) gte 2, "arguments[2]", DE(""));
    var paragraph = IIf(arrayLen(arguments) gte 3, "arguments[3]", DE("false"));
    
    do {
        objMatch = REFindNoCase("(((https?:|ftp:|gopher:)\/\/)|(www\.|ftp\.))[-[:alnum:]\?%,\.\/&##!;@:=\+~_]+[A-Za-z0-9\/]", string, nextMatch, true);
        if (objMatch.pos[1] GT nextMatch OR objMatch.pos[1] EQ nextMatch) {
            outString = outString & Mid(String, nextMatch, objMatch.pos[1] - nextMatch);
        } else {
            outString = outString & Mid(String, nextMatch, Len(string));
        }
        nextMatch = objMatch.pos[1] + objMatch.len[1];
        if (ArrayLen(objMatch.pos) GT 1) {
            // If the preceding character is an @, assume this is an e-mail address
            // (for addresses like admin@ftp.cdrom.com)
            if (Compare(Mid(String, Max(objMatch.pos[1] - 1, 1), 1), "@") NEQ 0) {
                thisURL = Mid(String, objMatch.pos[1], objMatch.len[1]);
                thisLink = "<A HREF=""";
                switch (LCase(Mid(String, objMatch.pos[2], objMatch.len[2]))) {
                    case "www.": {
                        thisLink = thisLink & "http://";
                        break;
                    }
                    case "ftp.": {
                        thisLink = thisLink & "ftp://";
                        break;
                    }
                }
                thisLink = thisLink & thisURL & """";
                if (Len(Target) GT 0) {
                    thisLink = thisLink & " TARGET=""" & Target & """";
                }
                thisLink = thisLink & ">" & thisURL & "</A>";
                outString = outString & thisLink;
                // String = Replace(String, thisURL, thisLink);
                // nextMatch = nextMatch + Len(thisURL);
            } else {
                outString = outString & Mid(String, objMatch.pos[1], objMatch.len[1]);
            }
        }
    } while (nextMatch GT 0);
        
    // Now turn e-mail addresses into mailto: links.
    outString = REReplace(outString, "([[:alnum:]_\.\-]+@([[:alnum:]_\.\-]+\.)+[[:alpha:]]{2,4})", "<A HREF=""mailto:\1"">\1</A>", "ALL");
        
    if (paragraph) {
        outString = ParagraphFormat(outString);
    }
    return outString;
}