Validating a URL in PHP

Question

I need a basic regular expression for validating a url, such that:

• Both http:// and http://www. are allowed (and the same thing with https:// and https://www.).
• All common tld like .com, .net. .org, .cc, .my, etc are allowed.
• Things like http://site.com/dir/dir2/page.html etc are allowed
• Only characters allowed in a url are allowed (such as alphanumeric chars, ?_-.& etc)

Basically something which will check if http:// or https:// is contained, and that at least one tld such as .com, .net, .[something] is contained.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Use php's filter

There are good examples on this page

var_dump( filter_var( 'http://example.com', FILTER_VALIDATE_URL ) );