Javascript regex replace text with emoticons

Question

I need to replace text like ;) or :p by emoticon but I can\'t create a regex in order to detect this. Now i can detect only like :wink:

Answer 1

Try the following.However, you should escape the special characters ( and ) in your smileys when making the regexes.

//helper function to escape special characters in regex

function RegExpEscape(text) {
    return text.replace(/[-[\]{}()*+?.,\\^$|#\s]/g, "\\$&"); 
}

function replaceEmoticons(text) {   
    var emoticons = {
        ':)'         : 'smile.gif',
        ':('         : 'sad.gif',
        ';)'         : 'wink.gif'


    }

    var result = text;
    var emotcode;
    var regex;

    for (emotcode in emoticons)
    {
        regex = new RegExp(RegExpEscape(emotcode), 'gi');
        result = result.replace(regex, function(match) {
            var pic = emots[match.toLowerCase()];

            if (pic != undefined) {
                return '';
                    } else {
                return match;
                    }
                });
    }

    return result;    
}