PHP regex match all urls

Question

I need help creating a Regex that will match all urls for example, please do not close question as a duplicate as I have been looking for what i need for a long time, and none of the answers i have seen have given an answer that solves my problem.

website.com

www.website.com

http://www.website.com

http://website.com

https://www.website.com

https://website.com

with also anything trailing

www.website.com/path-to-something

I am coding something that shortens any url, but to do so, first i need to match them all.

Thanks

I've tried a whole load of different expressions, Regex isns't exactly my forte... (http://[^ ]+) that is all i have right now, but it only matches one kind. — André Figueira, May 10 '13 at 11:53
@Spudley: Don't think so since `website.com` is not a valid URL and the usecase is different. OP wants to search for matching base URLs. — Menno, May 10 '13 at 12:06
@Aquillo - some of the answers on that other question would work fine. But really, the only difference between a valid URL and `website.com` is making the protocol part optional in the regex. — Spudley, May 10 '13 at 12:11
Use following RegEx, it's more generic: preg_match_all(@((((ht)|(f))tp[s]?://)|(www\.))([a-z][-a-z0-9]+\.)?([a-z][-a-z0-9]+\.)?[a-z][-a-z0-9]+\.[a-z]+[/]?[a-z0-9._\/~#&=;%+?-]*@si', $input, $result); — Mohammad Anini, Oct 09 '13 at 19:18

Lakatos Gyula · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-10T11:59:51.140

21

This one match correctly all you posted:

preg_match_all('#[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~\#?&//=]{2,256}\.[a-z]{2,4}\b(\/[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~\#?&//=]*)?#si', $targetString, $result);

edited May 10 '13 at 11:59

answered May 10 '13 at 11:54

Lakatos Gyula

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1

Please ellaborate...? – Menno May 10 '13 at 11:55
I get an error with that: Warning: preg_match(): Unknown modifier '{' i do i need to wrap it in something? – André Figueira May 10 '13 at 11:56
This works in JS, I'll try to convert it. – Lakatos Gyula May 10 '13 at 11:58
yes, you need to wrap it into some symbol that not used in the expression, i.e. $expression$ – Maxim May 10 '13 at 12:00
I converted it for you. – Lakatos Gyula May 10 '13 at 12:02
1

@LakatosGyula, your edited expression will not work because character `#` already exists in expression – Maxim May 10 '13 at 12:02
I fixed that 2 mins ago. :) Escaped them with '\' so now it works correctly. – Lakatos Gyula May 10 '13 at 12:04
@AndréFigueira This is wrong in so many ways. It's a real bad way to go about doing this and the regex will match invalid strings like for instance something like this `=.website.com` or `@@@@@.website.com` and many other invalid URLs. You should not be using a regex for this. – kittycat May 10 '13 at 17:06
@AndréFigueira see my answer below that solves this. – kittycat May 10 '13 at 17:19
this one is better for any valid url like anything.com/fewfrwg/wgrwgr ^(http\:\/\/|https\:\/\/)?([a-z0-9][a-z0-9\-]*\.)+[a-z0-9][a-z0-9\-]*(\/[^\/]+)*(\/)?$ – Amirh Jun 16 '15 at 08:55
1

WARNING: This doesn't work! It matches the string `name...like` as a URL – Luke Madhanga Feb 07 '17 at 09:02
1

This does not grab query parameters either. – Jeremy McJunkin Jun 14 '19 at 03:04
Doesn't work at all. $x = "https://www.google.com"; $x = preg_replace('#[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~\#?&//=]{2,256}\.[a-z]{2,4}\b(\/[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~\#?&//=]*)?#si', "$1", $x); – ABCD Jan 27 '20 at 18:32

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered May 10 '13 at 17:18

5

You want to use something like this:

$string = 'www.blah.com';

$temp_string = (!preg_match('#^(ht|f)tps?://#', $string)) // check if protocol not present
    ? 'http://' . $string // temporarily add one
    : $string; // use current

if (filter_var($temp_string, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL))
{
    echo 'is valid';
} else {
    echo 'not valid';
}

This uses PHP's build in URL validation. It will first check to see if a protocol is present, if it is not it will temporarily add one to a string to be checked then run it through validation. This is accurate unlike the currently accepted answer.

answered May 10 '13 at 17:18

kittycat

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Does this match things like gooogle.com and www.google.com? – André Figueira May 12 '13 at 10:59
yes http://viper-7.com/Jz7nR1 and yes http://viper-7.com/Iv9SiS – kittycat May 12 '13 at 11:03
What the above code does is if it finds a URL that is invalid in the sense it does not begin with either http:// https:// ftp:// or ftps:// it will temporarily add http:// to make it a full URL which can then be safely passed to the PHP built in URL validation function. Otherwise if it already contains it it will just pass to the validation function as-is. – kittycat May 12 '13 at 11:04
"http://googlecom" is valid according to FILTER_VALIDATE_URL. Not sure what your use is, but this isn't what I'd accept as a valid URL – Graham T May 17 '14 at 14:14

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 10 '13 at 12:05

You can use the following trick :

$url = "your URL"
$validation = "/^(http|https|ftp):\/\/([A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9_-]*(?:\.[A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9_-]*)+):?(\d+)?\/?/i";
if((bool)preg_match($validation, $url) === false)
echo 'Not a valid URL';

I think it may works for you.

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered May 10 '13 at 21:16

-1

Don't use a regex. There's a PHP function for doing what you want.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.parse-url.php

answered May 10 '13 at 21:16

Danack

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The questions is asking how to break down URL like things so that equivalent links can be checked for going to equivalent places, not whether it's valid or not. He wants to check whether the host is the same, the path is the same etc. – Danack May 11 '13 at 00:51
actually, we do shorten invalid urls, we match things that may be urls like if someone was to use google.com. technically that would be invalid, but we just look for that fix it, then shorten it.... Parse url isn't what we need, we already have a solution using regex working exactly like we want it, thanks for posting your answer anyway. – André Figueira May 12 '13 at 10:57
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@Danack parse_url() : _This function is not meant to validate the given URL, it only breaks it up into the above listed parts._ – Fredmat May 21 '15 at 17:07

PHP regex match all urls

4 Answers4