Regex vevo URL video-id

Question

I want to match the video-ID from a vevo.com URL.

Example URL:

http://www.vevo.com/watch/arash/she-makes-me-go/SE2VJ1200401

The ID would be SE2VJ1200401. I tried the pattern /(.*){12} but that did not work.

Answer 1

I think what you are probably aiming for is:

/(.{12})

But that will also match //www.vevo.c and /watch/arash/. If you want to limit it to just the last part of the URL, you could use:

/(.{12})$

However, you may want to consider using \w (any word character) or \S (any non-whitespace character) instead of . For instance:

/(\w{12})$
/(\S{12})$

Answer 2

Those VEVO ids are actually part of a standard called the International Standard Recording Code, which has a strict formatting, which can help your regex be more specific.

One that I've used is this:

// 2 alphabetical chars, 3 alphanumeric, two digits, then 5 digits
var regex = /([A-Z]{2}[A-Z0-9]{3}\d{2}\d{5})/;

This also allows for URLs that end in a query string or a hash.