Weird URL formatting problem anyone?

[ChrisB]

Can anyone tell me why when I try and put a link in to a post for the RS components website in response to a query the formatting goes all screwy, example:

http://www.rswww.com

The above was typed in as (without the spaces obviously):

[ u r l ] h t t p : / / w w w . r s w w w . c o m [ / u r l ]

Cheers,

Chris

[supergreg]

As soon as there's a 'www' somewhere within a string, the TC forum misinterpretes this as the beginning of a new URL. That's why it breaks yours into 2 pieces after the 'rs', regardless of enclosing tags. From my experience you can do nothing against it, unless Chris has any further ideas.

[jozza]

If you enter a string of text starting with www.something_or_another or someone@somewhere.com, you don't need to enclose it in the url forum tag; it will work it out and automatically add the link tags and text. If you put that in as a url it gets confused, what's happening is that it first converts the url and adds the tags, then it sees the [url] tags around the converted text and tries to convert it again, including the extra tags it inserted in the first step. (I think that makes sense!)

So, if you just want to type the address of a website, you needn't bother with the [url] tags, just enter the address and let the forum work it out. If you want different text to display as the link, then you should enter it as a hyperlink using the hyperlink button on the posting page..

Or, if you put [url="http:www.mysite.com"]http://www.mysite.com[/url] that would work too..

[ChrisB]

I think supergreg has it sussed - its a shortcoming of the forum software / config imho. Even without the URL tags the RS Comp site doesn't work either, look:

http://www.rswww.com

Looks like any website including "www" as part of the main domain name will be affected.

Cheers,

Chris

[jozza]

quote:Originally posted by ChrisB

Looks like any website including "www" as part of the main domain name will be affected.

---

id="quote">id="quote">

Ah yes, I hadn't noticed that it had "www." as part of the address, I should've paid a bit more attention []. However, my last trick there should work fine. Or get RS to change their website name, it's a bit naff IMO anyway []

As a developer who's been involved in some bits to do with the forum software used here, I'd say that it's not a shortcoming though. IMO the advantage of automatic URL linking outweighs the odd ones which wouldn't work, and as there is a workaround then it's not a problem. But what the developers could do is to be a little more intelligent with the replacement code, and only make substitutions once, as it stands it can end up fiddling with part of the post text twice which is what happens here. However, in their defence, the code to do this was written before XML was invented, and in the days before complex text search and replace functions were available so I think they did a reasonable job []

[supergreg]

Linktest

typed in as:

[ u r l = " h t t p : / / w w w . r s w w w . c o m " ] L i n k t e s t [ / u r l ]

Nope, Jozzas last trick doesn't work either...

[netsmithUK]

try this - its a bit of a cludge I know...

RS Website

[supergreg]

LOL [^]

[jozza]

quote:Originally posted by supergreg

Nope, Jozzas last trick doesn't work either...

---

id="quote">id="quote">****, should've tested it []. I think that the renaming of the website is the best idea LOL.

BTW, here's a completely obtuse and geeky coder's way to do it -www.rsww%77.com (try it, it works[^])

Had to get it right in the end didn't I? [)]