How to capture the part of URL after .com in regex?

Question

I've come up with the following regular expression to match the valid url.

^(?:(ftp|http|https):\/\/)?(?:[a-zA-Z]+\.){0,1}(?:[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9-]+){1}(?:\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6})?$

Which matches (ftp|http|https) optional, domain name without .com or anything but also I want to capture everything that come after .com.

The above regex validates http://stackoverflow.com or localhost or google.com but not http://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 09 '13 at 12:21

1

To match remaining URI you can add \S* in the end:

^(?:(ftp|http|https):\/\/)?(?:[a-zA-Z]+\.){0,1}(?:[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9-]+){1}(?:\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6})?(\/|\/\w\S*)?$

But to parse various components of URL it is much better to use built-in parse_url function.

Alternate to validate local urls:

^(?:(ftp|http|https):\/\/)?(?:[a-zA-Z0-9.]+\.){0,1}(?:[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9-]+){1}(?:\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6})?(\/|\/[\w#!:.?+=&%@!\-\/]*)?$

eg.: 172.18.11.178

Demo: http://regex101.com/r/vV0sB5

edited Dec 09 '13 at 12:21

codef0rmer

answered Dec 09 '13 at 07:58

anubhava

Regex or `parse_url` function? – anubhava Dec 09 '13 at 08:05
try `https://www.debuggex.com/` and paste your regex in the first textbox and run some tests. – codef0rmer Dec 09 '13 at 08:16
But you can see regex101 says `localhost.` is a valid url but its not. – codef0rmer Dec 09 '13 at 09:15
But that problem is there even with your original regex: http://regex101.com/r/wV0kI5 – anubhava Dec 09 '13 at 09:17
And that is precisely the reason `parse_url` function is preferred option. – anubhava Dec 09 '13 at 09:18
No. `https://www.debuggex.com/r/TofaCPnUw93Emg1a` - it say "does not match" if you use `localhost.` – codef0rmer Dec 09 '13 at 09:19
Also if you an extensive regex for matching any URL see this: http://stackoverflow.com/a/6427654/548225 – anubhava Dec 09 '13 at 10:00
awesome, Almost there. Only one minor issue `localhost/` becomes an invalid url as you are expecting atleast valid word after `/`. How to fix this? – codef0rmer Dec 09 '13 at 11:34

1 Answers1