Question

I have a string that may contain 0 or more urls. I want to replace each url in the string with that url wrapped in <a></a>. Is there a way I can get a reference to the current matched object inside a replace()?

For example:

var msg = "Go to http://google.com and youtube.com";
var regex = /[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&//=]{2,256}\.[a-z]{2,4}\b(\/[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&//=]*)?/gi;

msg.replace(regex, "<a href='"+<blank>+"'></a>") // Where <blank> is a reference to the current matched url

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes. Use regex backreferences. (Notice the parentheses I added to the beginning and end of the regular expression, to make the entire thing be put in a match group.)

var msg = "Go to http://google.com and youtube.com";
var regex = /([-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&\/\/=]{2,256}\.[a-z]{2,4}\b(\/[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&\/\/=]*)?)/gi;

msg.replace(regex, "<a href='$1'>$1</a>") // Where <blank> is a reference to the current matched url