Question

I have a string in the form of:

"Hello, this is a test. Let's tag @[William Maness], and then tag @[Another name], along with @[More Name]."


I want to convert that to…

"Hello, this is a test. Let's tag <a href='/search/william-maness'>William Maness</a>, and then tag <a href='/search/another-name'>Another name</a>, along with [...]"


I’m fairly sure this can be done with regex, but it’s just a bit too complex for me to work out. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

re.sub() accepts functions as well, so you can process the replacement text:

import re

text = "Hello, this is a test. Let's tag @[William Maness], and then tag @[Another name], along with @[More Name]."

def replace(match):
    text = match.group(1)  # Extract the first capturing group

    return '<a href="/search/{0}">{1}</a>'.format(  # Format it into a link
        text.lower().replace(' ', '-'),
        text
    )

re.sub(r'@\[(.*?)\]', replace, text)

Or, if you’re looking for a readable one-liner:

>>> import re
>>> re.sub(r'@\[(.*?)\]', (lambda m: (lambda x: '<a href="/search/{0}">{1}</a>'.format(x.lower().replace(' ', '-'), x))(m.group(1))), text)
'Hello, this is a test. Let\'s tag <a href="/search/william-maness">William Maness</a>, and then tag <a href="/search/another-name">Another name</a>, along with <a href="/search/more-name">More Name</a>.'