l function converts automatically system path in alias where available.

This simple snippet ports this useful function on your raw HTML attributes, point to alias or to the system path.

if(($nodepath = drupal_lookup_path('alias',"node/".$realnode->nid))===FALSE)
$nodepath =  base_path() . "node/".$realnode->nid;

Where $nodepath can be used on href

Cfr. drupal_lookup_path