Making a link pulled from a database active

I'm creating a social network, and in the user info section I've made it possible for the user to add there Fac开发者_StackOverflow社区ebook link into the database table via a input form. Now when they add this link, it sends it to the database and then it returns and echo's out the submitted data into both the user info page and the user status stream, this enables others can see there newly updated info.

Only problem is, the link submitted is not active when it returns from the database, is there anyway either in my page, or within the database, I can tell this to be an active link, maybe even some JavaScript that detects inactive links?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

What do you mean by "make the link active"?

What language are you developing in?

To use a database field to generate a clickable link in a web browser, you create the HTML framework and then insert the database output into the relevant position.

In PHP, for instance:

<a href="<?php echo $linkURL;?>"><?php echo $linkURL; ?></a>

Would create a clickable link which would direct visitors to the URL in the $linkURL variable.