Break up a string into text/http links

Question

I am trying to take a string of text and create an array from it so that the string:

var someText='I am some text and check this out!  http://blah.tld/foo/bar  Oh yeah! look at this too: http://foobar.baz';

insert magical regex here and

the array would look like this:

theArray[0]='I am some text and check this out!  '
theArray[1]='http://blah.tld/foo/bar'
theArray[2]='  Oh yeah! look at this too: '
theArray[3]='http://foobar.baz'

I'm at a loss, any help would greatly be appreciated

--Eric

Do you mean that the strings should be splitted each time a URL is found? — avpaderno
– avpaderno, Commented Jul 15, 2010 at 3:35
I know the string, I need to break it up munge it and put it back together, over and over — Eric
– Eric, Commented Jul 15, 2010 at 3:48

Anurag · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-15 05:58:03Z

2

Split by URL regex (thanks to @Pullet for pointing out a flaw here):

var urlPattern = /(https?\:\/\/\S+[^\.\s+])/;
someText.split(urlPattern);

Let's break down the regex :)

(https?    -> has "http", and an optional "s"
\:\/\/     -> followed by ://
\S+        -> followed by "contiguous" non-whitespace characters (\S+)
[^\.\s+])  -> *except* the first ".", or a series of whitespace characters (\s+)

Running through your sample text gives,

["I am some text and check this out!  ",
"http://blah.tld/foo/bar",
"  Oh yeah! look at this too: ",
"http://foobar.baz",
""]

edited Jul 15, 2010 at 5:58

answered Jul 15, 2010 at 3:41

Anurag

142k37 gold badges223 silver badges262 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

Eric Over a year ago

Anurag, thank you so much - that did the trick! Although I'm still struggling to read it!

David W. Keith Over a year ago

/(https*\:\/\/\S+[^\.\s+])/ would also match httpssss://test.com which is not a valid url. I think what is wanted is /(https?\:\/\/\S+[^\.\s+])/ The ? means that the preceding character is optional Though if you wanted to support other protocols something like the following would also work (depending on the number of protocols you need to support) /((https?|s?ftp|gopher)\:\/\/\S+[^\.\s+])/

Anurag Over a year ago

thanks @Pullets, good catch, made the change. I'll let gopher pass, not sure how many people still use it :0)

Samuel Meacham · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-15 03:49:49Z

0

Try this:

<script type="text/javascript">
    var url_regex = /((?:ftp|http|https):\/\/(?:\w+:{0,1}\w*@)?(?:\S+)(?::[0-9]+)?(?:\/|\/(?:[\w#!:.?+=&%@!\-\/]))?)+/g;
    var input = "I am some text and check this out!  http://blah.tld/foo/bar  Oh yeah! look at this too: http://foobar.baz";

    var results = input.split(url_regex);
    console.log(results);
</script>

results =

["I am some text and check this out! ",
"http://blah.tld/foo/bar",
" Oh yeah! look at this too: ",
"http://foobar.baz", ""]

You could trim the individual results too, to not have leading and trailing whitespace on the non-url entries.

answered Jul 15, 2010 at 3:49

Samuel Meacham

10.4k7 gold badges47 silver badges50 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Break up a string into text/http links

2 Answers 2

3 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

3 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related