Regex string issue in making plain text urls clickable

Question

I need a working Regex code in C# that detects plain text urls (http/https/ftp/ftps) in a string and make them clickable by putting an anchor tag around it with same url. I

Answer 1

Check out: Detect email in text using regex and Regex URL Replace, ignore Images and existing Links, just replace the regex for links, it will never replace a link inside a tag, only in contents.

http://html-agility-pack.net/?z=codeplex

Something like:

---

string textToBeLinkified = "... your text here ...";
const string regex = @"((www\.|(http|https|ftp|news|file)+\:\/\/)[_.a-z0-9-]+\.[a-z0-9\/_:@=.+?,##%&~-]*[^.|\'|\# |!|\(|?|,| |>|<|;|\)])";
Regex urlExpression = new Regex(regex, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.ExplicitCapture);

HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml(textToBeLinkified);

var nodes = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//text()[not(ancestor::a)]") ?? new HtmlNodeCollection();
foreach (var node in nodes)
{
    node.InnerHtml = urlExpression.Replace(node.InnerHtml, @"$0");
}
string linkifiedText = doc.DocumentNode.OuterHtml;