Automatically Link Twitter (X) @mentions in Joomla Articles

When you mention someone like @tassosm in an article, readers who want to follow them have to copy the handle and search for it on X. Adding every link by hand is tedious and easy to forget. This PHP snippet turns each @mention in your articles into a link to that X (formerly Twitter) profile, automatically.

The PHP snippet code

Set Code Type to PHP, then use this snippet. It runs while Joomla prepares each article and links every @handle in the visible text to https://x.com/handle. The links open in a new tab, and it also works on the article intros on your home page.

use Joomla\CMS\Factory;

// Where @mentions link to. Use 'https://twitter.com/' for the old domain.
$profileUrl = 'https://x.com/';

// Do not edit below.

$app = Factory::getApplication();

$linkMentions = function ($event) use ($profileUrl)
{
    // Joomla 5 and later pass the item through getItem(), Joomla 4 as an argument.
    $item = method_exists($event, 'getItem')
        ? $event->getItem()
        : $event->getArgument(1);

    if (!is_object($item)
        || empty($item->text)
        || strpos($item->text, '@') === false)
    {
        return;
    }

    // @handle: up to 15 letters, digits or underscores,
    // and not part of an email address, URL or domain.
    $pattern = '#(?<![A-Za-z0-9_@/.:])@([A-Za-z0-9_]{1,15})'
        . '(?![A-Za-z0-9_@]|\.[A-Za-z0-9_])#';

    $toLink = function ($match) use ($profileUrl)
    {
        $url  = $profileUrl . $match[1];
        $attr = 'target="_blank" rel="noopener"';

        return '<a href="' . $url . '" ' . $attr . '>@' . $match[1] . '</a>';
    };

    // Split the HTML into tags and text, so only visible text gets links.
    $parts = preg_split('#(<[^>]*>)#', $item->text, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
    $skip  = 0;

    foreach ($parts as $i => $part)
    {
        if ($part === '')
        {
            continue;
        }

        // Leave text inside links, code blocks, scripts and form fields alone.
        if ($part[0] === '<')
        {
            $tags = 'a|code|pre|script|style|textarea';

            if (preg_match('#^<(/?)(' . $tags . ')\b#i', $part, $tag))
            {
                $skip = max(0, $skip + ($tag[1] === '/' ? -1 : 1));
            }

            continue;
        }

        if ($skip > 0)
        {
            continue;
        }

        $parts[$i] = preg_replace_callback($pattern, $toLink, $part);
    }

    $item->text = implode('', $parts);
};

$app->registerEvent('onContentPrepare', $linkMentions);

The snippet only changes plain text. It leaves these alone:

• Email addresses.
• Existing links, so a mention you already linked by hand stays as it is.
• Code blocks.
• Image alt text and other HTML attributes.
• URLs and domain names, like a Mastodon profile link.
• Handles longer than 15 characters, which X doesn't allow.

The links are added while the page is built, so your saved articles stay exactly as you wrote them. Unpublish the snippet and the mentions go back to plain text.

To link to twitter.com instead, change $profileUrl to 'https://twitter.com/'.

How to add this snippet

1. Install Code Snippets if it isn't installed already.
2. Log into your Joomla backend.
3. Go to Components → Tassos Code Snippets.
4. Click New.
5. Enter a title, for example Twitter mention links.
6. Set Code Type to PHP.
7. Set Insertion Method to Auto-Insert Locations.
8. Set Location to On Page Load.
9. Paste the code above into the editor.
10. Click Save & Close.

Check that it works

1. Open an article that mentions someone with an @handle.
2. Hover over the mention.

It should now be a link to that person's X profile.

For other automatic text changes, see Search and Replace in Joomla. To learn more about how PHP snippets work, read the PHP snippet docs.