Converting Text into Clickable Link – PHP

preg_replace - Searches $subject for matches to $pattern and replaces them with $replacement.

By using the above preg_replace function I have created a simple function which will first find urls inside text and convert all into clickable links

function convert_links($text)

{

 $text = preg_replace('#(script|about|applet|activex|chrome):#is', "\1:", $text);

 $ret = ' ' . $text;

 $ret = preg_replace("#(^|[n ])([w]+?://[w#$%&~/.-;:=,?@[]+]*)#is", "\1<a href="\2" target="_blank">\2</a>", $ret);

 $ret = preg_replace("#(^|[n ])((www|ftp).[w#$%&~/.-;:=,?@[]+]*)#is", "\1<a href="http://\2" target="_blank">\2</a>", $ret);

 $ret = preg_replace("#(^|[n ])([a-z0-9&-_.]+?)@([w-]+.([w-.]+.)*[w]+)#i", "\1<a href="mailto:\2@\3">\2@\3</a>", $ret);

 $ret = substr($ret, 1);

 preg_match_all("/<a href="(.+?)"/", $ret, $match);

 $result1 = array_unique($match);

 $count = count($result1[0]);

 if($count > 0)

 {

 foreach ($result1 as $val)

 {

 foreach ($val as $item)

 {

 $item = str_replace('<a href="', '', $item);

 $item = str_replace('"', '', $item);

 }

 }

 }

 return $ret;

}

Usage

echo convert_links('your text here');