Extract parts of a URL

Question

Basically I am looking to extract a URL until it encounters a number which may or may not be present

Examples:

http://www.test.com/products/cards/product_code/12345/something_else
http://www.test.com/products/cards/product_code2/

Desired output -

http://www.test.com/products/cards/product_code/
http://www.test.com/products/cards/product_code2/

Additional Information - Languauge agnostic regex similar to this question Getting parts of a URL (Regex)

Many Thanks

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 13 '13 at 16:12

1

This might not be a job for regexes, but for existing tools in your language of choice. What language are you using? You probably don't want to use a regex, but rather an existing module that has already been written, tested, and debugged.

If you're using PHP, you want the parse_url function.

If you're using Perl, you want the URI module.

If you're using Ruby, use the URI module.

answered Mar 13 '13 at 16:12

Andy Lester

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.NET has the `Uri.GetComponents()` method. – Dour High Arch Mar 13 '13 at 16:26
Thanks, is there a canonical doc page on the web I can link to? I'll add it to my stock answer clip file. – Andy Lester Mar 13 '13 at 19:11
MSDN has [a page](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/txt7706a.aspx) on the `Uri` class; `GetComponents` is one of its methods. – Dour High Arch Mar 13 '13 at 19:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 13 '13 at 16:20

Here is a simple regex way of doing it:

<?php

$url = "http://www.test.com/products/cards/product_code/1234";
$pattern = '/\/[0-9]/';

preg_match($pattern, $url, $matches);

if (count($matches) > 0) {
    echo substr($url, 0, strpos($url,$matches[0])+1);
} else {
    echo $url;
}
?>

Mickaël Le Baillif · Answer 3 · 2013-03-13T16:28:47.290

Using sed :

sed 's#\(http://.*/\)[0-9]\+.*#\1#'

which means :

capture any characters starting with http:// up to (not including) the first encountered digit with is preceded by a slash : $http://.*/$[0-9]\+
continue matching any character up to the end of the line : .*$
replace these with what has been previously captured : \1

I chose # as the sed separator instead of the classical / because otherwise you would have to escape these characters in your regexp.

Extract parts of a URL

3 Answers3

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