Regex convert [URL](Text) to HTML link

Question

[http://url.com](Here is a link to explain.)

What regex would replace this with:

<a href="http://url.com">Here is a link to explain.</a>?

str.replace(/\[(\b(https?):\/\/[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|])\]/ig, "<a href='$1'>$1</a>")

This makes [http://url.com] become a link with http://url.com as the text, but I need to have the text be replaced inside ().

You seem to be interested in converting several markdown style strings to HTML based on your other questions. Why not just use a markdown parser library? — Joseph Marikle, Jul 02 '15 at 18:29
marked.js is a nice one it appears: https://github.com/chjj/marked. Here's a quick example usage: http://jsfiddle.net/jmarikle/07ozc5df/ — Joseph Marikle, Jul 02 '15 at 18:33
Note that in that demo the link works. It's just that jsfiddle blocks the navigation it seems. — Joseph Marikle, Jul 02 '15 at 18:35
Well that's by far the most useful thing I've discovered tonight. Thank you so much! Saved me a lot of trouble and question-asking. — frosty, Jul 02 '15 at 18:40
@JosephMarikle I can't seem to find any info on all the different options? For example how to do underline and strikethrough. — frosty, Jul 02 '15 at 19:32
Underline is a unique circumstance (see here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/207727/why-there-is-no-markdown-for-underline). For strikethrough and other syntaxes, [this link](https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet) seems to be a good resource. — Joseph Marikle, Jul 02 '15 at 19:39

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 02 '15 at 18:27

This will match those and extract each part as separate matches:

/\[(.*)\]\((.*)\)/

var regex = /\[(.*)\]\((.*)\)/,
    matches = regex.exec('[http://url.com](This is the text)');
document.querySelector('pre').innerText += matches[1] + '\n' + matches[2];

// create a link
var linkText = '<a href="' + matches[1] + '">' + matches[2] + '</a>';
document.querySelector('pre').innerText += '\n' + linkText;

<pre></pre>

Regex convert [URL](Text) to HTML link

1 Answers1