How to replace plain URLs with links?

Question

I am using the function below to match URLs inside a given text and replace them for HTML links. The regular expression is working great, but currently I am only replacing t

Answer 1

Here's my solution:

var content = "Visit https://wwww.google.com or watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T4DQYgsazo and news at http://www.bbc.com";
content = replaceUrlsWithLinks(content, "http://");
content = replaceUrlsWithLinks(content, "https://");

function replaceUrlsWithLinks(content, protocol) {
    var startPos = 0;
    var s = 0;

    while (s < content.length) {
        startPos = content.indexOf(protocol, s);

        if (startPos < 0)
            return content;

        let endPos = content.indexOf(" ", startPos + 1);

        if (endPos < 0)
            endPos = content.length;

        let url = content.substr(startPos, endPos - startPos);

        if (url.endsWith(".") || url.endsWith("?") || url.endsWith(",")) {
            url = url.substr(0, url.length - 1);
            endPos--;
        }

        if (ROOTNS.utils.stringsHelper.validUrl(url)) {
            let link = "" + url + "";
            content = content.substr(0, startPos) + link + content.substr(endPos);
            s = startPos + link.length;
        } else {
            s = endPos + 1;
        }
    }

    return content;
}

function validUrl(url) {
    try {
        new URL(url);
        return true;
    } catch (e) {
        return false;
    }
}