How to remove URL from a string completely in Javascript?

Question

I have a string that may contain several url links (http or https). I need a script that would remove all those URLs from the string completely and return that same string without them.

I tried so far:

 var url = "and I said http://fdsadfs.com/dasfsdadf/afsdasf.html";
 var protomatch = /(https?|ftp):\/\//; // NB: not '.*'
 var b = url.replace(protomatch, '');
 console.log(b);

but this only removes the http part and keeps the link.

How to write the right regex that it would remove everything that follows http and also detect several links in the string?

Thank you so much!

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-26T05:57:31.333

42

You can use this regex:

var b = url.replace(/(?:https?|ftp):\/\/[\n\S]+/g, '');
//=> and I said

This regex matches and removes any URL that starts with http:// or https:// or ftp:// and matches up to next space character OR end of input. [\n\S]+ will match across multi lines as well.

edited Aug 26 '15 at 05:57

answered May 09 '14 at 17:52

anubhava

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Could you improve your answer by converting that to a multiline regex and explaining what each line does? – George Stocker May 09 '14 at 17:53
1

@anubhava Technically not because `\S` excludes `\n` you're better of using. `[\S\n]` if you want to match multi lines – Downgoat Aug 25 '15 at 23:43
it is wrong as it can't remove something like www.domain.com – gtzinos May 25 '18 at 16:56
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URLs must start with `http://` or `https://` or `ftp://` otherwise this regex doesn't consider anything else as URL – anubhava Oct 02 '18 at 14:25

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Did you search for a url parser regex? This question has a few comprehensive answers Getting parts of a URL (Regex)

That said, if you want something much simpler (and maybe not as perfect), you should remember to capture the entire url string and not just the protocol.

Something like /(https?|ftp):\/\/[\.[a-zA-Z0-9\/\-]+/ should work better. Notice that the added half parses the rest of the URL after the protocol.

How to remove URL from a string completely in Javascript?

2 Answers2