method

auto_link

v3.0.9 - Show latest stable - Class: ActionView::Helpers::TextHelper

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 :html. 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 [email protected]")
# => "Go to <a href=\"http://www.rubyonrails.org\">http://www.rubyonrails.org</a> and
#     say hello to <a href=\"mailto:[email protected]\">[email protected]</a>"

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

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

post_body = "Welcome to my new blog at http://www.myblog.com/.  Please e-mail me at [email protected]."
auto_link(post_body, :html => { :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:[email protected]\">[email protected]</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 [email protected]."
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:[email protected]\">[email protected]</a>."

# File actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb, line 302
      def auto_link(text, *args, &block)#link = :all, html = {}, &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], options, &block), options[:html], &block)
          when :email_addresses             then auto_link_email_addresses(text, options[:html], &block)
          when :urls                        then auto_link_urls(text, options[:html], options, &block)
        end
      end

1Note

Documentation bug

jneto · Aug 6, 20094 thanks

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 .

auto_link

Examples

1Note

Documentation bug

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