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
    Responsive and Infinitely Scalable JS Animations

    Back in late 2012 it was not easy to find open source projects using requestAnimationFrame() - this is the hook that allows Javascript code to synchronize with a web browser's native paint loop. Animations using this method can run at 60 fps and deliver fantastic...

  • By
    Welcome to My New Office

    My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Optimize Your Links For Print Using CSS — Show The URL

    When moving around from page to page in your trusty browser, you get the benefit of hovering over links and viewing the link's target URL in the status bar. When it comes to page printouts, however, this obviously isn't an option. Most website printouts...

  • By
    Introducing MooTools ScrollSidebar

    How many times are you putting together a HTML navigation block or utility block of elements that you wish could be seen everywhere on a page? I've created a solution that will seamlessly allow you to do so: ScrollSidebar. ScrollSidebar allows you...

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!