feat request: string pattern support

[ridvanaltun]

Hey, I did something like this to support string patterns:

import React from 'react';

import Autolink, {AutolinkProps, CustomMatcher} from 'react-native-autolink';

const escapeRegExp = (value: string) => {
  return value.replace(/[-\/\\^$*+?.()|[\]{}]/g, '\\$&');
};

interface CustomMatcherInstance extends Omit<CustomMatcher, 'pattern'> {
  pattern: RegExp | string;
}

interface Props extends Omit<AutolinkProps, 'matchers'> {
  matchers: CustomMatcherInstance[];
}

const AutolinkInstance = ({matchers, ...props}: Props) => {
  return (
    <Autolink
      matchers={matchers.map(matcher => ({
        ...matcher,
        pattern:
          typeof matcher.pattern === 'string'
            ? new RegExp(escapeRegExp(matcher.pattern))
            : matcher.pattern,
      }))}
      {...props}
    />
  );
};

export default AutolinkInstance;

My aim increase the usability. I don't know is there any issue with it but it worked so far.

What do you think? @joshswan

[joshswan]

My initial reaction is that I like the idea of a createMatcher (or similar) utility that helps create custom matchers and can support using string patterns. But it should probably also make it easy to create capturing groups, similar in concept to path-to-regexp.

Needing to rebuild the regex on every render is something I'd like to avoid, which is why I think it should be separate from the component itself.