Fix Anchor URLs Using MooTools 1.2

By  on  

The administrative control panel I build for my customers features FCKEditor, a powerful WYSIWYG editor that allows the customer to add links, bold text, create ordered lists, and so on. I provide training and documentation to the customers but many times they simply forget to include the "http://" when add links into their content. Essentially, they end up with links that look like:

	<a href="www.davidwalsh.name">Click here</a>

Obviously, that's a problem. Luckily MooTools 1.2 provides a quick fix for that problem for website users.

The MooTools 1.2 Code

window.addEvent('domready', function() {
	$('fix-links').addEvent('click', function() {
		$$('a[href^=www.]').each(function(el) {
			el.set('href','http://www.' + el.get('href').split('www.')[1]);
		});
		alert('Links fixed.');
	});
});

The above solutions is NOT the best solution because it doesn't correct what the search engines see. Have a PHP solution? Submit it! The best solution is to fix the link within the FCKEditor plugin at the time the user adds the link. The code above, however, will buy you a little time to go in and fix any existing errant links.

Recent Features

  • By
    Being a Dev Dad

    I get asked loads of questions every day but I'm always surprised that they're rarely questions about code or even tech -- many of the questions I get are more about non-dev stuff like what my office is like, what software I use, and oftentimes...

  • By
    CSS @supports

    Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS.  What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix.  Yuck.  Another thing we...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Drag and Drop MooTools File Uploads

    Honesty hour confession:  file uploading within the web browser sucks.  It just does.  Like the ugly SELECT element, the file input is almost unstylable and looks different on different platforms.  Add to those criticism the fact that we're all used to drag and drop operations...

  • By
    AJAX For Evil:  Spyjax with jQuery

    Last year I wrote a popular post titled AJAX For Evil: Spyjax when I described a technique called "Spyjax": Spyjax, as I know it, is taking information from the user's computer for your own use — specifically their browsing habits. By using CSS and JavaScript, I...

Discussion

  1. Steinmann

    We are using FCKEditor, and it adds the http part automatically.

    We do have a php domparser that goes thru the whole thing fixing other things tho. Like adding lytebox links to some images etc…

  2. Does Mootools implement the CSS not() selector? If so, then you can use $$('a:not([^=http]').each...

    Good tip!

  3. Jordan

    @Eric Wendelin: That wouldn’t be ideal in a case where the link is meant to be relative.

  4. Caleb

    If there’s a way, it’d be great to have the Javascript check for url errors, and if it finds any, it’ll post the info to a php script, changing the url(s) permanently. I’ve been trying to create a script like that.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!