Kill URL at point

Question

I would like a way to kill the URL under the point. I have tried mark-thing, next-visible-thing etc. from the thing-cmds package, but they either do not know how to move over URLs in nxml-mode or fail with an error.

goto-address-mode works for copying the URL, but it requires several extra steps (clicking on the link, switching to my external web browser window, and copying the URL from the browser address bar) and more importantly, does not work for URLs that redirect. I would like something more convenient.

Answer 1

The url-get-url-at-point function from the url-util (emacs built-in) package should do the job for you. It is used in interactive commands like browse-url-at-point.

(require 'url-util)
(defun my/kill-url-at-point ()
  "Kill the url at point."
  (interactive)
  (kill-new (url-get-url-at-point)))

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If you need to copy URL from an HTML page while in an emacs browser like eww, you can use the shr-copy-url command directly. The fun thing is that if you consecutively call that command twice while the point is on a hyperlink, it removes the link re-directions too!

From C-h f shr-copy-url:

shr-copy-url is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `shr.el'.

(shr-copy-url &optional IMAGE-URL)

For more information check the manuals.

Copy the URL under point to the kill ring. If IMAGE-URL (the prefix) is non-nil, or there is no link under point, but there is an image under point then copy the URL of the image under point instead. If called twice, then try to fetch the URL and see whether it redirects somewhere else.

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Here's an example of how I use shr-copy-url in one of my eww snippets.

Answer 2

This is the way to get a run of text with the same face under point:

(defun face-under-point ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((face (face-at-point t))
        (start (point))
        (end (point))
        msg)
    (cl-loop while (eql face
                        (or (get-char-property start 'read-face-name)
                            (get-char-property start 'face)))
             do (decf start))
    (cl-loop while (eql face
                        (or (get-char-property end 'read-face-name)
                            (get-char-property end 'face)))
             do (incf end))
    (setq msg (buffer-substring-no-properties (+ start 1) end))
    (message "face under point was: %s" msg)))

Once I'm home I could look into how to also put this into yank stack.