Javascript/jQuery - parse hashtags in a string using regex, except for anchors in URLs

javascript, jquery, parsing, regex

Solution

Here's a regex to match hashtag(#) if it has a space before it or it's beginning of string.. like so:

(^|\s)(#[a-z\d-]+)

Working regex example:

http://regex101.com/r/pJ4wC5

Javascript:

var string = '#hello This is an #example of some text with #hash-tags - http://www.example.com/#anchor but dont want the link';

string = string.replace(/(^|\s)(#[a-z\d-]+)/ig, "$1<span class='hash_tag'>$2</span>");

console.log(string);

Output:

<span class='hash_tag'>#hello</span> This is an <span class='hash_tag'>#example</span> of some text with <span class='hash_tag'>#hash-tags</span> - http://www.example.com/#anchor but dont want the link

Problem

I've looked at a couple of other possible solutions on SO but didn't see any that were doing what I was doing. Currently I have been able to parse a string and detect hash tags with the following code: ``` mystring = mystring.replace(/(^|\W)(#[a-z\d][\w-]*)/ig, "$1<span class='hash_tag'>$2</span>").replace(/\s*$/, ""); ``` And this successfully detects all sorts of #hashtags. However it also detects anchors in URLs, such as: http://www.example.com/#anchor - I can't work out how to modify what I have to exclude anchors while keeping it flexible. Thanks

Original source