preg_replace problems - trying to convert parts of submitted text to URLs

[Flipperbw]

The Issue

 

My users can post comments. I want to turn the hidden links within those comments into clickable URLs. I have the following function to do this:

 

if (!function_exists('create_link'))
{
  function create_link($url) {

$pattern = "#((http|https|ftp)://(\S*?\.\S*?))(\s|\;|\)|\]|\[|\{|\}|,|\"|'|:|\<|$|\.\s)#ie";

$link_title = character_limiter(preg_replace($pattern, "$3", $url), 50);
    
$link = preg_replace($pattern, "'<a href=\"$1\" target=\"_blank\">{LINK_TITLE}</a>$4'", $url);
    if ($link == $url)
    {
      $url = 'http://' . $url;
      $link = preg_replace($pattern, "'<a href=\"$1\" target=\"_blank\">{LINK_TITLE}</a>$4'", $url);
    }
    
    if ($link != $url)
    {
      $result = str_replace('{LINK_TITLE}', $link_title, $link);
    }
    else
    {
      $result = FALSE;
    }
    return $result;
  }
}

 

 

I know that the regex is pretty bad. It kind of works, but makes every single thing with a period into a link, and messes up sometimes with target= portion where it will actually display that.

 

I've tried a bunch of other regex's but every single one gives me problems, typically like "php unknown modifier ]" or ")" or something.

 

here's how I call this function when users hit submit in the comment field:

 

$words = preg_split("/[\s,]+/", $comment);
    foreach ($words as $word) {
      if ($link = create_link($word))
      {
        $comment = str_replace($word, $link, $comment);

 

 

I just want to convert the right links into links. is something like:

 

^(((ht|f)tp(s?))\://)?(www.|[a-zA-Z].)[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.(com|edu|gov|mil|net|org|biz|info|name|museum|us|ca|uk)(\:[0-9]+)*(/($|[a-zA-Z0-9\.\,\;\?\'\\\+&%\$#\=~_\-]+))*$

 

any better? I don't know, nothing seems to work.

[Adam]

Have you tried Google..?

 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=php+regex+turn+urls+into+links

[Flipperbw]

Problem was solved. Not easily identifiable with google, the issue was in the way I had been splitting up words for a check. Sending the whole comment to an array solved the problem.