JSFiddle - React, Tailwind, and code Playground

by Lindsey Suarez

HTML

<p>Perhaps you should visit http://www.stackoverflow.com, since many people find http://www.stackoverflow.com helpful.</p>
<p>I personally visit http://www.stackoverflow.com quite often.</p>
<p>What is so special about http://www.stackoverflow.com?</p>
<p>You can discover how to create anchors out of text like http://www.stackoverflow.com/page.aspx?aParam=1.</p>
<p>Can you see how the knowledge you discovered correctly breaks the boundary of the URL http://www.stackoverflow.com/page.aspx?aParam=1?</p>
<p>Visit "http://www.stackoverflow.com" today!</p>
http://www.stackoverflow.com

JavaScript

(function($) {
    $.fn.anchorTextUrls = function() {
        // Test a text node's contents for URLs and split and rebuild it with an achor
        var testAndTag = function(el) {
            // Test for URLs along whitespace and punctuation boundaries (don't look too hard or you will be consumed)
            var m = el.nodeValue.match(/(https?:\/\/.*?)[.!?;,]?(\s+|"|$)/);

            // If we've found a valid URL, m[1] contains the URL
            if (m) {
                // Clone the text node to hold the "tail end" of the split node
                var tail = $(el).clone()[0];

                // Substring the nodeValue attribute of the text nodes based on the match boundaries
                el.nodeValue = el.nodeValue.substring(0, el.nodeValue.indexOf(m[1]));
                tail.nodeValue = tail.nodeValue.substring(tail.nodeValue.indexOf(m[1]) + m[1].length);

                // Rebuild the DOM inserting the new anchor element between the split text nodes
                $(el).after(tail).after($("<a></a>").attr("href", m[1]).html(m[1]));

                // Recurse on the new tail node to check for more URLs
                testAndTag(tail);
            }

            // Behave like a function
            return false;
        }

        // For each element selected by jQuery
        this.each(function() {
            // Select all descendant nodes of the element and pick out only text nodes
            var textNodes = $(this).add("*", this).contents().filter(function() {
                return this.nodeType == 3
            });


            // Take action on each text node
            $.each(textNodes, function(i, el) {
                testAndTag(el);
            });
        });
    }
}(jQuery));

$("body").anchorTextUrls(); //Sample call