C# code to linkify urls in a string

Question

Does anyone have any good c# code (and regular expressions) that will parse a string and \"linkify\" any urls that may be in the string?

Answer 1

well, after a lot of research on this, and several attempts to fix times when

1. people enter in http://www.sitename.com and www.sitename.com in the same post
2. fixes to parenthisis like (http://www.sitename.com) and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752574(vs.85).aspx
3. long urls like: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/b000ads62g/ref=s9_simz_gw_s3_p74_t1?pf_rd_m=atvpdkikx0der&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=04eezfszazqzs8xfm9yd&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

we are now using this HtmlHelper extension... thought I would share and get any comments:

    private static Regex regExHttpLinks = new Regex(@"(?<=\()\b(https?://|www\.)[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%?=~_()|!:,.;]*[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%=~_()|](?=\))|(?<=(?[=~|_#]))\b(https?://|www\.)[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%?=~_()|!:,.;]*[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%=~_()|](?=\k)|\b(https?://|www\.)[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%?=~_()|!:,.;]*[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%=~_()|]", RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

    public static string Format(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string html)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(html))
        {
            return html;
        }

        html = htmlHelper.Encode(html);
        html = html.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "
");

        // replace periods on numeric values that appear to be valid domain names
        var periodReplacement = "[[[replace:period]]]";
        html = Regex.Replace(html, @"(?<=\d)\.(?=\d)", periodReplacement);

        // create links for matches
        var linkMatches = regExHttpLinks.Matches(html);
        for (int i = 0; i < linkMatches.Count; i++)
        {
            var temp = linkMatches[i].ToString();

            if (!temp.Contains("://"))
            {
                temp = "http://" + temp;
            }

            html = html.Replace(linkMatches[i].ToString(), String.Format("{1}", temp.Replace(".", periodReplacement).ToLower(), linkMatches[i].ToString().Replace(".", periodReplacement)));
        }

        // Clear out period replacement
        html = html.Replace(periodReplacement, ".");

        return html;
    }