linkify-it
A robust JavaScript library for detecting links and emails in plain text with full Unicode and international domain support.
What is linkify-it?
linkify-it is a JavaScript library that identifies and parses links, emails, and custom patterns in plain text. It solves the problem of accurately detecting URLs and emails in user-generated content, supporting Unicode characters, international domains, and extensible rules for specialized use cases like social media mentions.
Developers building applications that process plain text, such as markdown parsers, chat platforms, comment systems, or content editors where automatic link detection is required.
Developers choose linkify-it for its reliability, full Unicode support, and extensibility—allowing custom protocols and validation rules without sacrificing performance or accuracy in diverse text environments.
Overview
Links recognition library with full unicode support
Use Cases
Best For
- Adding link detection to markdown or rich-text editors
- Parsing URLs and emails in chat or messaging applications
- Extending link recognition with custom protocols like `git:` or `skype:`
- Handling international domains and Unicode text in user inputs
- Implementing social media mention parsing (e.g., Twitter handles)
- Optimizing text processing with quick pre-check methods like `.pretest()`
Not Ideal For
- Projects needing automatic link rendering or rich text embedding out-of-the-box
- High-throughput systems processing terabytes of text where minimal latency is critical
- Teams wanting pre-configured social media mentions without writing custom validation code
- Environments restricted to server-side rendering with zero JavaScript runtime
Pros & Cons
Pros
Handles astral characters and international text seamlessly, as emphasized in the README for accurate pattern detection across diverse languages.
Allows adding custom protocols and validators, enabling support for mentions like Twitter handles through the API's validate and normalize functions.
Detects URLs without explicit schemes and emails without prefixes, with options like fuzzyIP and termination characters to tailor behavior.
Supports non-Latin characters and custom TLDs via the .tlds() method, making it suitable for global applications without false positives.
Cons
Lacks security features for link sanitization, requiring additional libraries or code to prevent XSS attacks when displaying detected links.
Adding custom patterns like social media mentions involves writing regex validators and normalizers, as shown in the Twitter example, which can be error-prone and time-consuming.
The extensive Unicode processing and fuzzy matching may introduce latency in real-time applications compared to simpler, less accurate detection libraries.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
speakingurlGenerate a slug – transliteration with a lot of options
normalize-urlNormalize a URL
url-patterneasier than regex string matching patterns for urls and other strings. turn strings into data or data into strings.
humanize-urlHumanize a URL: https://sindresorhus.com → sindresorhus.com
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