I need to validate a url like those of web servers. Something like http://localhost:8080/xyz
How do we do that using regex. Sorry, new to regex.
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What do you have so far?lindon fox– lindon fox2011-06-12 10:29:17 +00:00Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 10:29
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3What do you want to verify URLs using a regular expression with?Gumbo– Gumbo2011-06-12 10:38:32 +00:00Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 10:38
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1How do you expect a regular expression to validate a URL? Wouldn't you be better trying to access it to see if you get a 2xx ?johnsyweb– johnsyweb2011-06-12 11:00:27 +00:00Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 11:00
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1 Answer
the relevant specs can be found in rfc 3986 and include regular syntax definitions for all possible url components. however, for your purposes these will probably be too general. a somewhat condensed expression matching only urls under the http(s) protocol would be
http[s]?://(([[:alpha:][:digit:]-._~!$&'\(\)*+,;=]|%([0-9A-F]{2}))+|([0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5]))(:[0-9]+)?(/([[:alpha:][:digit:]-._~!$&'\(\)*+,;=]|%([0-9A-F]{2}))*)+(\?([[:alpha:][:digit:]-._~!$&'\(\)*+,;=/?]|%([0-9A-F]{2}))+)?(#([[:alpha:][:digit:]-._~!$&'\(\)*+,;=/?]|%([0-9A-F]{2}))+)?
which can be simplified to
http[s]?://(([^/:\.[:space:]]+(\.[^/:\.[:space:]]+)*)|([0-9](\.[0-9]{3})))(:[0-9]+)?((/[^?#[:space:]]+)(\?[^#[:space:]]+)?(\#.+)?)?
in case you can be confident about the proper syntax of the url components.
note that you might wish more restrictive patterns e.g. for full text search and to only allow for iana-registered top-level-domains.
hope it helps,
best regards, carsten
1 Comment
yayitswei
This regex doesn't match if there is a trailing slash. How would you extend it to match even with trailing slashes?