Regular Expression for url paths

Question

I want a regular expression to match on paths containing '/food/' but not '/food/api/':

http://example.com/food/api/pasta?sauce=true

Right now I'm using this:

/^((?!\/food\/api\/).)*$/

The problem with this is it matches ANY path that doesn't contain '/food/api/'

Behavior I want to achieve:

REGEX MATCHES
example.com/food/
example.com/food/meals

REGEX IGNORES
example.com/food/api/pasta?sauce=true
example.com/food/api/pasta
example.com/food/api/
example.com/meal
example.com/

The fourth bird · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-08 19:45:36Z

1

Using a pattern like this ((?!\/food\/api\/).)* (a tempered greedy token solution) will match the whole line if it does not contain the sub string /food/api

As the quantifier is a * it will also match an empty line.

Instead, you can use an alternation to match until the first occurrence of a / followed by food or meal followed and a forward slash. After this slash, check that it is not followed by /api

^[^/]+/(?:food|meal)/(?!api/).*$

Regex demo

If the string can not contains spaces, you can exclude them using the negated character class [^/\s]+ and match \S* instead of .*

^[^/\s]+/(?:food|meal)/(?!api/)\S*$

Regex demo

edited Dec 8, 2020 at 19:45

answered Dec 8, 2020 at 19:35

The fourth bird

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2 Comments

O P Over a year ago

What syntax would be needed to shorten this up so it does a 'contains' check instead of starts the string at 'http/s'?

The fourth bird Over a year ago

@OP I have added an update. You can leave out the protocol in that case.

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