Because I had so much trouble finding a good auto-linking implementation out in the wild, I decided to roll my own. It seemed that everything I found out there was either an implementation that didn't cover every case, or was just limited in one way or another.
So, this utility attempts to handle everything. It:
- Autolinks URLs, whether or not they start with the protocol (i.e. 'http://'). In other words, it will automatically link the text "google.com", as well as "http://google.com".
- Will properly handle URLs with special characters
- Will properly handle URLs with query parameters or a named anchor (i.e. hash)
- Will autolink email addresses.
- Will autolink phone numbers.
- Will autolink mentions (Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, TikTok).
- Will autolink hashtags.
- Will properly handle HTML input. The utility will not change the
href
attribute inside anchor (<a>) tags (or any other tag/attribute), and will not accidentally wrap the inner text of an anchor tag with a new one (which would cause doubly-nested anchor tags).
Hope that this utility helps you as well!
Full API Docs: http://gregjacobs.github.io/Autolinker.js/api/
Live Example: http://gregjacobs.github.io/Autolinker.js/examples/live-example/
See Upgrading from v3.x -> v4.x (Breaking Changes) at the bottom of this readme.
Installing with the npm package manager:
npm install autolinker --save
Installing with the Yarn package manager:
yarn add autolinker
Installing with the Bower package manager:
bower install Autolinker.js --save
Simply clone this repository or download a zip of the project, and link to
either dist/Autolinker.js
or dist/Autolinker.min.js
with a script tag.
import Autolinker from 'autolinker';
const Autolinker = require('autolinker');
// note: npm wants an all-lowercase package name, but the utility is a class and
// should be aliased with a capital letter
<!-- 'Autolinker.js' or 'Autolinker.min.js' - non-minified is better for
debugging, minified is better for users' download time -->
<script src="path/to/autolinker/dist/Autolinker.min.js"></script>
Using the static link() method:
const linkedText = Autolinker.link(textToAutolink[, options]);
Using as a class:
const autolinker = new Autolinker([ options ]);
const linkedText = autolinker.link(textToAutoLink);
Note: if using the same options to autolink multiple pieces of html/text, it is slightly more efficient to create a single Autolinker instance, and run the link() method repeatedly (i.e. use the "class" form above).
const linkedText = Autolinker.link("Check out google.com");
// Produces: "Check out <a href="http://google.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">google.com</a>"
const linkedText = Autolinker.link("Check out google.com", {
newWindow: false
});
// Produces: "Check out <a href="http://google.com">google.com</a>"
The following are the options which may be specified for linking. These are specified by providing an Object as the second parameter to Autolinker.link(). These include:
-
newWindow : boolean
true
to have the links should open in a new window when clicked,false
otherwise. Defaults totrue
. -
urls : boolean/Object
true
to have URLs auto-linked,false
to skip auto-linking of URLs. Defaults totrue
.This option also accepts an Object form with 3 properties to allow for more customization of what exactly gets linked. All default to
true
:- schemeMatches (boolean):
true
to match URLs found prefixed with a scheme, i.e.http://google.com
, orother+scheme://google.com
,false
to prevent these types of matches. - tldMatches:
true
to match URLs with known top level domains (.com, .net, etc.) that are not prefixed with a scheme (i.e. 'http://'). Ex:google.com
,asdf.org/?page=1
, etc. Set tofalse
to prevent these types of matches. - ipV4Matches (boolean):
true
to match IPv4 addresses. Ex:192.168.0.1
.false
to prevent these types of matches. Note that if the IP address had a prefixed scheme (such as 'http://'), andschemeMatches
is true, it will still be linked.
Example usage:
urls: { schemeMatches: true, tldMatches: false, ipV4Matches: true }
- schemeMatches (boolean):
-
email : boolean
true
to have email addresses auto-linked,false
to skip auto-linking of email addresses. Defaults totrue
. -
phone : boolean
true
to have phone numbers auto-linked,false
to skip auto-linking of phone numbers. Defaults totrue
. -
mention : string
A string for the service name to have mentions (@username) auto-linked to. Supported values at this time are 'twitter', 'soundcloud', 'instagram' and 'tiktok'. Passfalse
to skip auto-linking of mentions. Defaults tofalse
. -
hashtag : boolean/string
A string for the service name to have hashtags auto-linked to. Supported values at this time are 'twitter', 'facebook', 'instagram' and 'tiktok'. Passfalse
to skip auto-linking of hashtags. Defaults tofalse
. -
stripPrefix : boolean
true
to have the'http://'
(or'https://'
) and/or the'www.'
stripped from the beginning of displayed links,false
otherwise. Defaults totrue
.This option also accepts an Object form with 2 properties to allow for more customization of what exactly is prevented from being displayed. Both default to
true
:- scheme (boolean):
true
to prevent the scheme part of a URL match from being displayed to the user. Example:'http://google.com'
will be displayed as'google.com'
.false
to not strip the scheme. NOTE: Only an'http://'
or'https://'
scheme will be removed, so as not to remove a potentially dangerous scheme (such as'file://'
or'javascript:'
). - www (boolean):
true
to prevent the'www.'
part of a URL match from being displayed to the user. Ex:'www.google.com'
will be displayed as'google.com'
.false
to not strip the'www'
.
- scheme (boolean):
-
stripTrailingSlash : boolean
true
to remove the trailing slash from URL matches,false
to keep the trailing slash. Example whentrue
:http://google.com/
will be displayed ashttp://google.com
. Defaults totrue
. -
truncate : number/Object
A number for how many characters long URLs/emails/Twitter handles/Twitter hashtags should be truncated to inside the text of a link. If the match is over the number of characters, it will be truncated to this length by replacing the end of the string with a two period ellipsis ('..').Example: a url like 'http://www.yahoo.com/some/long/path/to/a/file' truncated to 25 characters may look like this: 'yahoo.com/some/long/pat..'
In the object form, both
length
andlocation
may be specified to perform truncation. Available options forlocation
are: 'end' (default), 'middle', or 'smart'. Example usage:truncate: { length: 32, location: 'middle' }
The 'smart' truncation option is for URLs where the algorithm attempts to strip out unnecessary parts of the URL (such as the 'www.', then URL scheme, hash, etc.) before trying to find a good point to insert the ellipsis if it is still too long. For details, see source code of: TruncateSmart
-
className : string
A CSS class name to add to the generated anchor tags. This class will be added to all links, as well as this class plus "url"/"email"/"phone"/"hashtag"/"mention" suffixes for styling url/email/phone/hashtag/mention links differently.The name of the hashtag/mention service is also added as a CSS class for those types of matches.
For example, if this config is provided as "my-link", then:
- URL links will have the CSS classes: "my-link my-link-url"
- Email links will have the CSS classes: "my-link my-link-email"
- Phone links will have the CSS classes: "my-link my-link-phone"
- Twitter mention links will have the CSS classes: "my-link my-link-mention my-link-twitter"
- Instagram mention links will have the CSS classes: "my-link my-link-mention my-link-instagram"
- Hashtag links will have the CSS classes: "my-link my-link-hashtag my-link-twitter"
-
decodePercentEncoding: boolean
true
to decode percent-encoded characters in URL matches,false
to keep the percent-encoded characters.Example when
true
:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jos%C3%A9
will be displayed ashttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_José
.Defaults to
true
. -
replaceFn : Function
A function to use to programmatically make replacements of matches in the input string, one at a time. See the section Custom Replacement Function for more details. -
sanitizeHtml : boolean
true
to HTML-encode the start and end brackets of existing HTML tags found in the input string. This will escape<
and>
characters to<
and>
, respectively.Setting this to
true
will prevent XSS (Cross-site Scripting) attacks, but will remove the significance of existing HTML tags in the input string. If you would like to maintain the significance of existing HTML tags while also making the output HTML string safe, leave this option asfalse
and use a tool like https://github.com/cure53/DOMPurify (or others) on the input string before running Autolinker.Defaults to
false
.
For example, if you wanted to disable links from opening in new windows, you could do:
const linkedText = Autolinker.link("Check out google.com", {
newWindow: false
});
// Produces: "Check out <a href="http://google.com">google.com</a>"
And if you wanted to truncate the length of URLs (while also not opening in a new window), you could do:
const linkedText = Autolinker.link("http://www.yahoo.com/some/long/path/to/a/file", {
truncate: 25,
newWindow: false
});
// Produces: "<a href="http://www.yahoo.com/some/long/path/to/a/file">yahoo.com/some/long/pat..</a>"
One could update an entire DOM element that has unlinked text to auto-link them as such:
const myTextEl = document.getElementById('text');
myTextEl.innerHTML = Autolinker.link(myTextEl.innerHTML);
Using the same pre-configured Autolinker instance in multiple locations of a codebase (usually by dependency injection):
const autolinker = new Autolinker({ newWindow: false, truncate: 25 });
//...
autolinker.link("Check out http://www.yahoo.com/some/long/path/to/a/file");
// Produces: "Check out <a href="http://www.yahoo.com/some/long/path/to/a/file">yahoo.com/some/long/pat..</a>"
//...
autolinker.link( "Go to www.google.com" );
// Produces: "Go to <a href="http://www.google.com">google.com</a>"
If you're just interested in retrieving the list of Matches without producing a transformed string, you can use the parse() method.
For example:
const matches = Autolinker.parse("Hello google.com, I am asdf@asdf.com", {
urls: true,
email: true
});
console.log(matches.length); // 2
console.log(matches[0].type); // 'url'
console.log(matches[0].getUrl()); // 'google.com'
console.log(matches[1].type); // 'email'
console.log(matches[1].getEmail()); // 'asdf@asdf.com'
A custom replacement function (replaceFn) may be provided to replace url/email/phone/mention/hashtag matches on an individual basis, based on the return from this function.
const input = "..."; // string with URLs, Email Addresses, Mentions (Twitter, Instagram), and Hashtags
const linkedText = Autolinker.link(input, {
replaceFn : function(match) {
console.log("href = ", match.getAnchorHref());
console.log("text = ", match.getAnchorText());
switch(match.type) {
case 'url':
console.log("url: ", match.getUrl());
return true; // let Autolinker perform its normal anchor tag replacement
case 'email':
const email = match.getEmail();
console.log("email: ", email);
if(email === "my@own.address") {
return false; // don't auto-link this particular email address; leave as-is
} else {
return; // no return value will have Autolinker perform its normal anchor tag replacement (same as returning `true`)
}
case 'phone':
console.log("Phone Number: ", match.getPhoneNumber());
return '<a href="http://newplace.to.link.phone.numbers.to/">' + match.getPhoneNumber() + '</a>';
case 'mention':
console.log("Mention: ", match.getMention());
console.log("Mention Service Name: ", match.getServiceName());
return '<a href="http://newplace.to.link.mention.handles.to/">' + match.getMention() + '</a>';
case 'hashtag':
console.log("Hashtag: ", match.getHashtag());
return '<a href="http://newplace.to.link.hashtag.handles.to/">' + match.getHashtag() + '</a>';
}
}
} );
const input = "..."; // string with URLs, Email Addresses, Mentions (Twitter, Instagram), and Hashtags
const linkedText = Autolinker.link( input, {
replaceFn : function( match ) {
console.log("href = ", match.getAnchorHref());
console.log("text = ", match.getAnchorText());
const tag = match.buildTag(); // returns an `Autolinker.HtmlTag` instance for an <a> tag
tag.setAttr('rel', 'nofollow'); // adds a 'rel' attribute
tag.addClass('external-link'); // adds a CSS class
tag.setInnerHtml('Click here!'); // sets the inner html for the anchor tag
return tag;
}
} );
The replaceFn
is provided one argument:
- An Autolinker.match.Match object which details the match that is to be replaced.
A replacement of the match is made based on the return value of the function. The following return values may be provided:
- No return value (
undefined
), ortrue
(boolean): Delegate back to Autolinker to replace the match as it normally would. false
(boolean): Do not replace the current match at all - leave as-is.- Any string: If a string is returned from the function, the string will be used directly as the replacement HTML for the match.
- An Autolinker.HtmlTag instance, which can be used to build/modify an HTML tag before writing out its HTML text.
The full API docs for Autolinker may be referenced at: http://gregjacobs.github.io/Autolinker.js/api/
http://gregjacobs.github.io/Autolinker.js/examples/
- Internet Explorer support has been removed since its official demise in June 2022.
- The
urls.wwwMatches
config has been removed. Awww.
prefix is now treated like any other subdomain of a top level domain (TLD) match (such as 'subdomain.google.com'). Match.getType()
should be replaced withMatch.type
. This allows for TypeScript type narrowing ofMatch
objects returned by theparse()
method or inside thereplaceFn
.- The
Matcher
classes have been removed in favor of a single finite state machine parser, greatly improving the performance of Autolinker but removing some of the customizability of the old regular expressions. Will address this customizability in a future release. Autolinker.AnchorTagBuilder
,Autolinker.HtmlTag
, andAutolinker.match.*
references have been removed. These shouldn't be needed as public APIs, but please raise a GitHub issue if these are for some reason needed.
- If you are still on v1.x, first follow the instructions in the Upgrading from v1.x -> v2.x section below.
- The
HtmlParser
class has been removed in favor of an internalparseHtml()
function which replaces the old regexp-based implementation with a state machine parser that is guaranteed to run in linear time. If you were using theHtmlParser
class directly, I recommend switching to htmlparser2, which implements the HTML semantics better. The internalparseHtml()
function that Autolinker now uses is fairly geared towards Autolinker's purposes, and may not be useful in a general HTML parsing sense.
-
If you are still on v0.x, first follow the instructions in the Upgrading from v0.x -> v1.x section below.
-
The codebase has been converted to TypeScript, and uses ES6 exports. You can now use the
import
statement to pull in theAutolinker
class and related entities such asMatch
:// ES6/TypeScript/Webpack import Autolinker, { Match } from 'autolinker';
The
require()
interface is still supported as well for Node.js:// Node.js const Autolinker = require('autolinker');
-
You will no longer need the
@types/autolinker
package as this package now exports its own types -
You will no longer be able to override the regular expressions in the
Matcher
classes by assigning to the prototype (for instance, something likePhoneMatcher.prototype.regex = ...
). This is due to how TypeScript creates properties for class instances in the constructor rather than on prototypes.The idea of providing your own regular expression for these classes is a brittle notion anyway, as the
Matcher
classes rely on capturing groups in the RegExp being in the right place, or even multiple capturing groups for the same piece of information to support a different format. These capturing groups and associated code are subject to change as the regular expression needs to be updated, and will not involve a major version release of Autolinker.In the future you will be able to override the default
Matcher
classes entirely to provide your own implementation, but please raise an issue (or +1 an issue) if you think the library should support a currently-unsupported format.
twitter
option removed, replaced withmention
(which accepts 'twitter', 'instagram' and 'soundcloud' values)- Matching mentions (previously the
twitter
option) now defaults to being turned off. Previously, Twitter handle matching was on by default. replaceFn
option now called with just one argument: theMatch
object (previously was called with two arguments:autolinker
andmatch
)- (Used inside the
replaceFn
)TwitterMatch
replaced withMentionMatch
, andMentionMatch.getType()
now returns'mention'
instead of'twitter'
- (Used inside the
replaceFn
)TwitterMatch.getTwitterHandle()
->MentionMatch.getMention()
Pull requests definitely welcome. To setup the project, make sure you have Node.js installed. Then open up a command prompt and type the following:
cd Autolinker.js # where you cloned the project
npm install
To run the tests:
npm run test
- Make sure to add tests to check your new functionality/bugfix
- Run the
npm run test
command to test
For this you will need Ruby installed (note: Ruby comes pre-installed on MacOS), with the JSDuck gem.
See https://github.com/senchalabs/jsduck#getting-it for installation instructions on Windows/Mac/Linux
JSDuck is used to build the project's API/documentation site. See [Documentation Generator Notes](#Documentation Generator Notes) for more info.
Run:
yarn serve
Then open your browser to: http://localhost:8080/docs/examples/index.html
You should be able to make a change to source files, and refresh the page to see the changes.
Note: If anyone wants to submit a PR converting gulp watch
to webpack
with
the live development server, that would be much appreciated :)
This project uses JSDuck for its documentation generation, which produces the page at http://gregjacobs.github.io/Autolinker.js.
Unfortunately, JSDuck is a very old project that is no longer maintained. As
such, it doesn't support TypeScript or anything from ES6 (the class
keyword,
arrow functions, etc). However, I have yet to find a better documentation
generator that creates such a useful API site. (Suggestions for a new one are
welcome though - please raise an issue.)
Since ES6 is not supported, we must generate the documentation from the ES5 output. As such, a few precautions must be taken care of to make sure the documentation comes out right:
-
@cfg
documentation tags must exist above a class property that has a default value, or else it won't end up in the ES5 output. For example:// Will correctly end up in the ES5 output /** * @cfg {String} title */ readonly title: string = ''; // Will *not* end up in ES5 output, and thus, won't end up in the generated // documentation /** * @cfg {String} title */ readonly title: string;
-
The
@constructor
tag must be replaced with@method constructor
See Releases