Android Regex text url to convert as clickable link

Question

I am very new to regex strings and operation. But I am trying to develop an android app that needs to replace text url (without tag) from the whole string to

<a href='$link'>$link </a>

I found that working code -

text_to_url= text_to_url.replaceAll("(<a[^>]+>)|(http(?s)://.*)", "<a href=\"$0\">$0</a>");

But as I admitted as above, I am very new to regex words and functions. Even I can get url inside tag with that code, but it not stop at end of url (I think according to *).

Problem is, if there are 2 or more continuous link_text_urls side by side or line by line, it displaying as one link (url is 1st occurence url) .

I tried many times and searched through googles to find this bit result. But my regex knowledge can't help me to find it out.

Please kindly let me know the answer. Thank you so much for understanding my problem.

Example text -

<h3>Post Title</h3>
<p>This is a paragraph of text of the post</p>
<img src="http://imageurl">
<p>Please read more on this link</p><br/>
http://www.readmorelink.com/1212/1212post

so what should be the exact result if there are multiple links in a string? do you want a list of separated links from it? — stamanuel, Mar 11 '17 at 09:23
also does it have to be in regex or is additionally java code also ok? — stamanuel, Mar 11 '17 at 09:27
I want to regex those text_url to be encoded between a> tag as in question. Because my output is on a webview. — Aung Aung Swe, Mar 11 '17 at 09:29
[Using RegEx to parse HTML isn't a good idea](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454). You could use Jsoup. — Jared Rummler, Mar 11 '17 at 09:46

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 11 '17 at 09:38

looks like the regex you are using is wrong.

try this:

text_to_url = text_to_url.replaceAll("(?i)\\b((?:[a-z][\\w-]+:(?:\\/{1,3}|[a-z0-9%])|www\\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}\\/)(?:[^\\s()<>]+|\\(([^\\s()<>]+|(\\([^\\s()<>]+\\)))*\\))+(?:\\(([^\\s()<>]+|(\\([^\\s()<>]+\\)))*\\)|[^\\s`!()\\[\\]{};:'\".,<>?«»“”‘’]))", "<a href=\"$0\">$0</a>");

this regex is not from me, it is actually from john gruber and is well explained here: http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matching_urls

There are various editors where you can try and play around with regexes, like e.g. this one: https://regex101.com/ - they are very handy to understand what's going on.

Thank you for answering, your code can take output as required results. But it also replacing — Aung Aung Swe, Mar 11 '17 at 10:09

ManzoorWani · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-11T10:50:34.823

0

I can see a minor error in your regex. It should be https? instead of http(?s) to make s optional. (?s) means inline modifier to make . match newline character as well.
As far as

but it not stop at end of url (I think according to *)

Yes you are right, it is because of * which is greedy by default. You can make it lazy by adding a ? after it.
But a better approach would be to use this

text_to_url= text_to_url.replaceAll("(?<!\")(https?://[^\s\n]*)(?!\")", "<a href=\"$0\">$0</a>");

where [^\s\n]* will match any character zero or multiple times which is not a space or a newline.

edited Mar 11 '17 at 10:50

answered Mar 11 '17 at 09:41

ManzoorWani

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Thank you for great answer, your code is working after changing "replaceAll("(]+>)|(https?://[^\\s\\n]*)", "$0");" . But it also replacing img tag too. How can I exclude img src from this regex. Thank you so much. – Aung Aung Swe Mar 11 '17 at 10:13
Can you post the text as well? – ManzoorWani Mar 11 '17 at 10:22
yes, I edited on question. as in sample there is a text_link without a> tag. I want to regex like these texts only to become a> tag enclosed link. Thank you. – Aung Aung Swe Mar 11 '17 at 10:29
Updated the answer. You can leave ... tags as such and only replace the bare URLs to make them clickable – ManzoorWani Mar 11 '17 at 10:52

Android Regex text url to convert as clickable link

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