method

auto_link

v2.2.1 - Show latest stable - 2 notes - Class: ActionView::Helpers::TextHelper

1.0.0 (0)
1.1.6 (0)
1.2.6 (1)
2.0.3 (13)
2.1.0 (0)
2.2.1 (14)
2.3.8 (0)
3.0.0 (0)
3.0.9 (-1)
3.1.0
3.2.1
3.2.8
3.2.13
4.0.2
4.1.8
4.2.1
4.2.7
4.2.9
5.0.0.1
5.1.7
5.2.3
6.0.0
6.1.3.1
6.1.7.7
7.0.0
7.1.3.2
7.1.3.4
What's this?

auto_link(text, *args, &block) public

Turns all URLs and e-mail addresses into clickable links. The :link option will limit what should be linked. You can add HTML attributes to the links using :href_options. Possible values for :link are :all (default), :email_addresses, and :urls. If a block is given, each URL and e-mail address is yielded and the result is used as the link text.

Examples

  auto_link("Go to http://www.rubyonrails.org and say hello to david@loudthinking.com")
  # => "Go to <a href=\"http://www.rubyonrails.org\">http://www.rubyonrails.org</a> and
  #     say hello to <a href=\"mailto:david@loudthinking.com\">david@loudthinking.com</a>"

  auto_link("Visit http://www.loudthinking.com/ or e-mail david@loudthinking.com", :link => :urls)
  # => "Visit <a href=\"http://www.loudthinking.com/\">http://www.loudthinking.com/</a>
  #     or e-mail david@loudthinking.com"

  auto_link("Visit http://www.loudthinking.com/ or e-mail david@loudthinking.com", :link => :email_addresses)
  # => "Visit http://www.loudthinking.com/ or e-mail <a href=\"mailto:david@loudthinking.com\">david@loudthinking.com</a>"

  post_body = "Welcome to my new blog at http://www.myblog.com/.  Please e-mail me at me@email.com."
  auto_link(post_body, :href_options => { :target => '_blank' }) do |text|
    truncate(text, 15)
  end
  # => "Welcome to my new blog at <a href=\"http://www.myblog.com/\" target=\"_blank\">http://www.m...</a>.
        Please e-mail me at <a href=\"mailto:me@email.com\">me@email.com</a>."

You can still use auto_link with the old API that accepts the link as its optional second parameter and the html_options hash as its optional third parameter:

  post_body = "Welcome to my new blog at http://www.myblog.com/. Please e-mail me at me@email.com."
  auto_link(post_body, :urls)     # => Once upon\na time
  # => "Welcome to my new blog at <a href=\"http://www.myblog.com/\">http://www.myblog.com</a>.
        Please e-mail me at me@email.com."

  auto_link(post_body, :all, :target => "_blank")     # => Once upon\na time
  # => "Welcome to my new blog at <a href=\"http://www.myblog.com/\" target=\"_blank\">http://www.myblog.com</a>.
        Please e-mail me at <a href=\"mailto:me@email.com\">me@email.com</a>."

Show source

# File actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 384
      def auto_link(text, *args, &block)#link = :all, href_options = {}, &block)
        return '' if text.blank?

        options = args.size == 2 ? {} : args.extract_options! # this is necessary because the old auto_link API has a Hash as its last parameter
        unless args.empty?
          options[:link] = args[0] || :all
          options[:html] = args[1] || {}
        end
        options.reverse_merge!(:link => :all, :html => {})

        case options[:link].to_sym
          when :all                         then auto_link_email_addresses(auto_link_urls(text, options[:html], &block), &block)
          when :email_addresses             then auto_link_email_addresses(text, &block)
          when :urls                        then auto_link_urls(text, options[:html], &block)
        end
      end

August 6, 2009

4 thanks

Documentation bug

When adding the :target option, the documentation states that you should user :href_options like so:

auto_link(post_body, :href_options => { :target => '_blank' })

However, I could only get it to work using :html instead:

auto_link(post_body, :html => { :target => '_blank' })

I’m using Rails 2.2.2, but I believe that this also happens for more recent version .

November 6, 2011 - (>= v3.1.0)

3 thanks

Removed in 3.1.x

This method (and #auto_link_urls) has been removed in Rails 3.1 - other options are out there, such as Rinku, however there is a gem you can use for migration purposes etc, which is rails_autolink: http://rubygems.org/gems/rails_autolink

auto_link

Related methods

Examples

Documentation bug

Removed in 3.1.x