Removing Email Address Using Regex and Before_Save

Question

Trying to use a before_save in my Post model and then regex to replace anything that looks like an email with the word 'forbidden'. This is to cut down on spam from comments/posts created by users in a discussion board.

It is currently giving me a syntax error; but I am sure it is more than that? How do I fix it?

Post.rb

  before_save :remove_emails

  # Prevents and replaces any emails or URLs posted by user as <forbidden>
  def remove_emails
    self.post = post.gsub^(((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]+)*(/($|[a-zA-Z0-9\.\,\;\?\'\\\+&amp;%\$#\=~_\-]+))*$, "forbidden")
  end

Answer 1

According to doc,

1. There is no gsub^ function. you have to use gsub or gsub!
2. Pattern (first parameter) should be surrounded by '/' (slash)

Answer 2

remove the ^ right after gsub.

Answer 3

With some adaptations on the Regexp posted in this question, you can try :

# Prevents and replaces any emails or URLs posted by user as <forbidden>
def remove_emails
  self.post.gsub!(/(http|https):\/\/[a-z0-9-\.]+([\-\.]{1}[a-z0-9-\.]+)*[a-z]{2,5}\S*/i, 'forbidden')
end