convert string to html (hyperlink)

Question

i defined ToHtml() extension for string class and convert break to <br/>. how can detect hyper link and convert to <a> element?

public static class StringExtension
{
    public static string ToHtml(this string item)
    {
        //\r\n windows
        //\n unix
        //\r mac os
        return item.Replace("\r\n", "<br/>").Replace("\n", "<br/>").Replace("\r", "<br/>");
    }
}

c#, asp.net

Answer 1

see this one, uses regex

private string ConvertUrlsToLinks(string msg) {
    string regex = @"((www\.|(http|https|ftp|news|file)+\:\/\/)[&#95;.a-z0-9-]+\.[a-z0-9\/&#95;:@=.+?,##%&~-]*[^.|\'|\# |!|\(|?|,| |>|<|;|\)])";
    Regex r = new Regex(regex, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
    return r.Replace(msg, "<a href=\"$1\" title=\"Click to open in a new window or tab\" target=\"&#95;blank\">$1</a>").Replace("href=\"www", "href=\"http://www");
}

Answer 2

You could use a regular expression here to identify where the hyperlink begins and ends (possibly based on the length of the match) Then add in your anchor tags before and after.