Turn URL into HTML link

Question

In Python, if I have a URL, what is the simplest way to turn something like:

http://stackoverflow.com

into:

<a href="http://stackoverflow.com">http://stackoverflow.com</a>

So far I have tied a lot with Regular Expressions, but nothing works at all.

Answer 1

You could use regex.

>>> import re
>>> s = "http://stackoverflow.com www.foo.com"
>>> re.sub(r'\b((?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?(?:[^\s.]+\.)+\w{2,4})\b', r'<a href="\1">\1</a>', s)
'<a href="http://stackoverflow.com">http://stackoverflow.com</a> <a href="www.foo.com">www.foo.com</a>'

Answer 2

You can use str.format:

>>> link = 'http://stackoverflow.com'
>>> print('<a href="{0}">{0}</a>'.format(link))
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com">http://stackoverflow.com</a>
>>>

Note however that you need to number the format fields since you are repeating an argument.