Regex to match URL where scheme is optional (without "http")

Question

I am using the following regex to match a URL:

$search  = "/([\S]+\.(MUSEUM|TRAVEL|AERO|ARPA|ASIA|COOP|INFO|NAME|BIZ|CAT|COM|INT|JOBS|NET|ORG|PRO|TEL|AC|AD|AE|AF|AG|AI|AL|AM|AN|AO|AQ|AR|AS|AT|AU|au|AW|AX|AZ|BA|BB|BD|BE|BF|BG|BH|BI|BJ|BL|BM|BN|BO|BR|BS|BT|BV|BW|BY|BZ|CA|CC|CD|CF|CG|CH|CI|CK|CL|CM|CN|CO|CR|CU|CV|CX|CY|CZ|DE|DJ|DK|DM|DO|DZ|EC|EDU|EE|EG|EH|ER|ES|ET|EU|FI|FJ|FK|FM|FO|FR|GA|GB|GD|GE|GF|GG|GH|GI|GL|GM|GN|GOV|GP|GQ|GR|GS|GT|GU|GW|GY|HK|HM|HN|HR|HT|HU|ID|IE|IL|IM|IN|IO|IQ|IR|IS|IT|JE|JM|JO|JP|KE|KG|KH|KI|KM|KN|KP|KR|KW|KY|KZ|LA|LB|LC|LI|LK|LR|LS|LT|LU|LV|LY|MA|MC|MD|ME|MF|MG|MH|MIL|MK|ML|MM|MN|MO|MOBI|MP|MQ|MR|MS|MT|MU|MV|MW|MX|MY|MZ|NA|NC|NE|NF|NG|NI|NL|NO|NP|NR|NU|NZ|OM|PA|PE|PF|PG|PH|PK|PL|PM|PN|PR|PS|PT|PW|PY|QA|RE|RO|RS|RU|RW|SA|SB|SC|SD|SE|SG|SH|SI|SJ|SK|SL|SM|SN|SO|SR|ST|SU|SV|SY|SZ|TC|TD|TF|TG|TH|TJ|TK|TL|TM|TN|TO|R|H|TP|TR|TT|TV|TW|TZ|UA|UG|UK|UM|US|UY|UZ|VA|VC|VE|VG|VI|VN|VU|WF|WS|YE|YT|YU|ZA|ZM|ZW)([\S]*))/i";

But its a bit screwed up because it also matches "example.php" which I dont want. and something like abc...test. I want it to match example.com though. and www.example.com as well as http://example.com.

It just needs a slight tweak at the end but I am not sure what. (there should be a slash after the any domain name which it is not checking for right now and it is only checking \S)

thank you for your time.

Boldewyn · Accepted Answer · 2009-07-17 10:37:05Z

21

$search  = "#^((?#
    the scheme:
  )(?:https?://)(?#
    second level domains and beyond:
  )(?:[\S]+\.)+((?#
    top level domains:
  )MUSEUM|TRAVEL|AERO|ARPA|ASIA|EDU|GOV|MIL|MOBI|(?#
  )COOP|INFO|NAME|BIZ|CAT|COM|INT|JOBS|NET|ORG|PRO|TEL|(?#
  )A[CDEFGILMNOQRSTUWXZ]|B[ABDEFGHIJLMNORSTVWYZ]|(?#
  )C[ACDFGHIKLMNORUVXYZ]|D[EJKMOZ]|(?#
  )E[CEGHRSTU]|F[IJKMOR]|G[ABDEFGHILMNPQRSTUWY]|(?#
  )H[KMNRTU]|I[DELMNOQRST]|J[EMOP]|(?#
  )K[EGHIMNPRWYZ]|L[ABCIKRSTUVY]|M[ACDEFGHKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]|(?#
  )N[ACEFGILOPRUZ]|OM|P[AEFGHKLMNRSTWY]|QA|R[EOSUW]|(?#
  )S[ABCDEGHIJKLMNORTUVYZ]|T[CDFGHJKLMNOPRTVWZ]|(?#
  )U[AGKMSYZ]|V[ACEGINU]|W[FS]|Y[ETU]|Z[AMW])(?#
    the path, can be there or not:
  )(/[a-z0-9\._/~%\-\+&\#\?!=\(\)@]*)?)$#i";

Just cleaned up a bit. This will match only HTTP(s) addresses, and, as long as you copied all top level domains correctly from IANA, only those standardized (it will not match http://localhost) and with the http:// declared.

Finally you should end with the path part, that will always start with a /, if it is there.

However, I'd suggest to follow Cerebrus: If you're not sure about this, learn regexps in a more gentle way and use proven patterns for complicated tasks.

Cheers,

By the way: Your regexp will also match something.r and something.h (between |TO| and |TR| in your example). I left them out in my version, as I guess it was a typo.

On re-reading the question: Change

  )(?:https?://)(?#

to

  )(?:https?://)?(?#

(there is a ? extra) to match 'URLs' without the scheme.

edited Jul 17, 2009 at 10:37

answered Jul 17, 2009 at 8:07

Boldewyn

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9 Comments

Alec Smart Over a year ago

but i dont want the http:// in the beginning to compulsory. as i want it to match "abc.com" also.

Alec Smart Over a year ago

can you please improve [\S]* to probably no spaces + only words + only numbers or whatever that is allowed in a URL?

Boldewyn Over a year ago

\S should never match spaces... I updated it to what Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_edit#Links_and_URLs allows in it's URLs. That looks reasonable.

Boldewyn Over a year ago

:-) Yeah, and unfortunately all the other generic TLDs. This will make automated link detection without natural language processing near impossible...

Eddie Over a year ago

Yeah I doubt this will catch all the open domain tlds like big.wong

|

Diego Perini · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-18 02:23:27Z

12

Not exactly what the OP asked for but this is a much simpler regular expression that does not need to be updated each time the IANA introduces a new TLD. I believe this is more adequate for most simple needs:

^(?:https?://)?(?:[\w]+\.)(?:\.?[\w]{2,})+$

no list of TLD, localhost is not matched, the number of subparts must be >= 2 and the length of each subpart must be >= 2 (fx: "a.a" will not match but "a.ab" will match).

answered Aug 18, 2010 at 2:23

Diego Perini

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4 Comments

lulalala Over a year ago

So this does not match the path & query param part of url?

Styphon Over a year ago

Also fails to match hyphens in the URL.

ahmd0 Over a year ago

You need to escape slashes in https?:// but still it's too broad. You can test it here: regexr.com

VilladsR Over a year ago

It doesn't seem to match subdomains e.g. consent.cookiebot.com

B Seven · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-18 22:28:08Z

8

This question was surprisingly difficult to find an answer for. The regexes I found were too complicated to understand, and anything more that a regex is overkill and too difficult to implement.

Finally came up with:

/(\S+\.(com|net|org|edu|gov)(\/\S+)?)/

Works with http://example.com, https://example.com, example.com, http://example.com/foo.

Explanation:

Looks for .com, etc.
Matches everything before it up to the space
Matches everything after it up to the space

answered Jul 18, 2013 at 22:28

B Seven

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2 Comments

TextGeek Over a year ago

That will also match if a string like ".com" occurs but is not part of the domain, like in "example.zork/foo/.com/bar", and omits all the county-specific top-level domains (like .uk, .ca, etc) and others.

Luigi Over a year ago

+1 for letting you choose which domains you'd like to accept, although I would make sure to point that out. . . adding a word boundary (\b) after the domains prevents hits that match the domain but keep extending, like example.commerce or example.governance . . /(\S+\.(com|net|org|edu|gov)\b(\/\S+)?)/

Sebastián Palma · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-22 00:52:05Z

6

This will get any url in its entirety, including ?= and #/ if they exist:

/[A-Za-z]+:\/\/[A-Za-z0-9\-_]+\.[A-Za-z0-9\-_:%&;\?\#\/.=]+/g

edited Jan 22, 2018 at 0:52

Sebastián Palma

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answered Jul 29, 2015 at 15:01

Miko Trueman

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2 Comments

stelios Over a year ago

Also matches hap://foo.com/ :)

TextGeek Over a year ago

This omits a few permitted characters, such as apostrophe, !, double-quote, and plus; and % should only be allowed if followed by 2 hex digits. Not to mention internationalized URIS (IRIs)/.

Bluehorn · Accepted Answer · 2009-07-17 07:39:15Z

1

Using a single regexp to match an URL string makes the code incredible unreadable. I'd suggest to use parse_url to split the URL into its components (which is not a trivial task), and check each part with a regexp.

answered Jul 17, 2009 at 7:39

Bluehorn

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Comments

axel22 · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-22 12:15:04Z

1

Changing the end of the regex to (/\S*)?)$ should solve your problem.

To explain what that is doing -

it is looking for / followed by some characters (not whitespace)
this match is optional, ? indicated 0 or 1 times
and finally it should be followed by a end of string (or change it to \b for matching on a word boundary).

edited Aug 22, 2011 at 12:15

axel22

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answered Jul 17, 2009 at 7:45

benophobia

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Comments

aminhotob · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-05 00:52:41Z

1

I think this is simple and efficient /^(https?:\/\/)?([\da-z\.-]+)\.([a-z\.]{2,6})([\/\w \.-]*)*\/?$/

answered Nov 5, 2013 at 0:52

aminhotob

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Comments

Matthieu · Accepted Answer · 2009-07-17 07:51:47Z

0

$ : The dollar signifies the end of the string.
For example \d*$ will match strings which end with a digit. So you need to add the $!

answered Jul 17, 2009 at 7:51

Matthieu

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Jerry · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-18 15:45:00Z

0

Regex to match all urls (with www, without www, with http or https, without http or https, includes all 2-6 letter top level domain names [for countries, ex 'ly','us'], ports, query strings, and anchors ['#']). It's not 100% but it is better than anything I have seen posted on the web.

It uses the top level domains from the first answer, combined with other techniques found in my searches. It will return any valid url that has bounds, that is where \b comes into play. Since the trailing '/' is also triggered by \b, the last one, is a match for one or more '?'.

/\b((http(s?):\/\/)?([a-z0-9\-]+\.)+(MUSEUM|TRAVEL|AERO|ARPA|ASIA|EDU|GOV|MIL|MOBI|COOP|INFO|NAME|BIZ|CAT|COM|INT|JOBS|NET|ORG|PRO|TEL|A[CDEFGILMNOQRSTUWXZ]|B[ABDEFGHIJLMNORSTVWYZ]|C[ACDFGHIKLMNORUVXYZ]|D[EJKMOZ]|E[CEGHRSTU]|F[IJKMOR]|G[ABDEFGHILMNPQRSTUWY]|H[KMNRTU]|I[DELMNOQRST]|J[EMOP]|K[EGHIMNPRWYZ]|L[ABCIKRSTUVY]|M[ACDEFGHKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]|N[ACEFGILOPRUZ]|OM|P[AEFGHKLMNRSTWY]|QA|R[EOSUW]|S[ABCDEGHIJKLMNORTUVYZ]|T[CDFGHJKLMNOPRTVWZ]|U[AGKMSYZ]|V[ACEGINU]|W[FS]|Y[ETU]|Z[AMW])(:[0-9]{1,5})?((\/([a-z0-9_\-\.~]*)*)?((\/)?\?[a-z0-9+_\-\.%=&amp;]*)?)?(#[a-zA-Z0-9!$&'()*+.=-_~:@/?]*)?)/gi

edited Feb 18, 2013 at 15:45

answered Feb 18, 2013 at 12:10

Jerry

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2 Comments

user354134 Over a year ago

What does "/?" mean near the end of the regex? Did you mean "\/?"

user354134 Over a year ago

Doesn't appear to work for things like "s3.amazonaws.com/plivocloud/…"

Marco · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-31 15:02:37Z

0

This is THE ONE:

_^(?:(?:https?|ftp)://)(?:\S+(?::\S*)?@)?(?:(?!10(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?!127(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?!169\.254(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?!192\.168(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?!172\.(?:1[6-9]|2\d|3[0-1])(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[01]\d|22[0-3])(?:\.(?:1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])){2}(?:\.(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-4]))|(?:(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+-?)*[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)(?:\.(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+-?)*[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)*(?:\.(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]{2,})))(?::\d{2,5})?(?:/[^\s]*)?$_iuS

answered May 31, 2013 at 15:02

Marco

1

Comments

pragma · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-14 06:05:53Z

0

Try Regexy::Web::Url

r = Regexy::Web::Url.new # matches 'http://foo.com', 'www.foo.com' and 'foo.com'

answered Mar 14, 2015 at 6:05

pragma

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Christoph · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-25 14:17:29Z

-1

[ftp:\/\/www\/.-https:\/\/-http:\/\/][a-zA-Z0-9u00a1-uffff0]{1,3}[^ ]{1,1000}

This works fine for me in js

var regex = new RegExp('[ftp:\/\/www\/.-https:\/\/-http:\/\/][a-zA-Z0-9u00a1-uffff0]{1,3}[^ ]{1,1000}');
regex.exec('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM7MFYoylVs&feature=youtu.be&t=20s');

edited Apr 25, 2017 at 14:17

Christoph

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answered Apr 25, 2017 at 9:42

keshav gaur

1

1 Comment

Felix Haeberle Over a year ago

can you format your answer better? It's very difficult to understand.

SpYk3HH · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-25 19:21:27Z

Just to add to things. I know this doesn't fully and directly answer this specific question, but it's the best place I can find to add this info. I wrote a jQuery plug a while back to match urls for similar purpose, however at current state (will update it as time goes on) it will still consider addresses like 'http://abc.php' as valid. However, if there is no http, https, or ftp at url start, it will not return 'valid'. Though I should clarify, this jQuery method returns an object and not just one string or boolean. The object breaks things down and among the breakdown is a .valid boolean. See the full fiddle and test in the link at bottom. If you simply wanna grab the plugin and go, see below:

jQuery Plugin

(function($){$.matchUrl||$.extend({matchUrl:function(c){var b=void 0,d="url,,scheme,,authority,path,,query,,fragment".split(","),e=/^(([^\:\/\?\#]+)\:)?(\/\/([^\/\?\#]*))?([^\?\#]*)(\?([^\#]*))?(\#(.*))?/,a={url:void 0,scheme:void 0,authority:void 0,path:void 0,query:void 0,fragment:void 0,valid:!1};"string"===typeof c&&""!=c&&(b=c.match(e));if("object"===typeof b)for(x in b)d[x]&&""!=d[x]&&(a[d[x]]=b[x]);a.scheme&&a.authority&&(a.valid=!0);return a}});})(jQuery);

jsFiddle with example:

http://jsfiddle.net/SpYk3/e4Ank/

axel22 · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-22 12:14:34Z

-3

(http|www)\S+

Just use this regex to match all url's

edited Aug 22, 2011 at 12:14

axel22

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answered Aug 22, 2011 at 9:58

Nibalkar

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1 Comment

Stefan Arentz Over a year ago

This is a really bad regular expression. I can't believe people actually voted for it. It is bad because it will also match completely invalid httpcheese as a valid url.

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