Mike-Ward.Net

Converting URLs to Hyperlinks in JavaScript

I hunted around for a JavaScript method to convert URLs in a text stream to hyper-links and came up short. I wrote this quickie method that works for the limited data I’ve thrown at it. There are likely more robust methods but darn if I could find one.

function convertUrlsToLinks(text)
{
    var matchUrl = /(ftp|http|https):\/\/(\w+:{0,1}\w*@)?(\S+)(:[0-9]+)?(\/|\/([\w#!:.?+=&%@!\-\/]))?/gi
    return text.replace(matchUrl, '[<a href="$&">$&</a>]($&)');
}

OK, JavaScript guru’s. Is there a better way?