Check if a URL is a video URL or PHOTO URL

Question

I have a textview in which a user is supposed to enter a url. First I am checking the validity of the URL. Once the validity is confirmed, I need to check if It's a video url or photo url. I have two arrays of all possible video (MP4, MOV etc) and photo (JPG, PNG) file formats and I get an appropriate message if the url contains any element from those two arrays.

Here is a sample instagram video link.. For example: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-PilcbFy2w/

The following Link is a valid video link but it does not contain any video file formats like (MOV, MP4 etc). How can I validate such links?

I know the concept of regular expressions to validate such things but for that I'll have to implement a bunch of IF statements which is not an efficient way. The sample video Link is just an example. I need to validate all kind of video links whether they are from social media platforms or whatever. Help regrading this will really be appreciated.

Here is my sample code..

@IBOutlet weak var textVW: UITextView!

@IBAction func validateButton(_ sender: UIButton) {


    let userInputURL = URL(string: textVW.text)

    if userInputURL != nil && userInputURL?.scheme != nil && userInputURL?.host != nil {
        //  - a scheme (like http://)
        //  - a host (like stackoverflow.com)

        print("Valid URL..")

        // Now checking url type, if its a video or image url..
        checkURLType(inputURL: userInputURL!)

    }

    else {
        print("Invalid URL..")
    }
}

func checkURLType(inputURL : URL) {

    // Most commom image types..
    let imageExtensions = ["png", "jpg", "gif", "tif"]

    // Most cmmon video types..
    let videoExtensions = ["WEBM", "MPG", "MPEG", "MPE", "MP4", "M4P", "M4V", "AVI", "WMV", "MOV"]

    let url: URL? = NSURL(fileURLWithPath: inputURL.path) as URL
    let pathExtention = url?.pathExtension

    if imageExtensions.contains(pathExtention!)
        {
            print("Image URL: \(String(describing: url))")

        }

    else if videoExtensions.contains(pathExtention!)
        {
             print("Video URL: \(String(describing: url))")
        }

        else
        {
             print("Does Not Exist: \(String(describing: url))")
        }


}

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 08 '20 at 10:18

Short answer, as you already found out, you cannot use the URL in a reliable way to determine the returned ressource.

Long answer: The "extension" in a URL has no meaning at all. Think of if as a hint to the client, but the web server might do what it wants to do. Take https://www.acme.com for example: there is no file extension at all, and depending on it's configuration, the web server decides what ressource to return. Typically, this will be a HTML document, e.g. "index.html" or something. Even more, https://www.acme.com/index.php has a php extension, but the web server will typically return an HTML document, not a PHP script.

The only way to get the information is to check the mimeType property of the URLResponse.

If you are only interested in the header data (before donwloading all the content), you should check this answer: Get HTTP header fields only on iPhone

okay I checked the MimeType property of the URL response for the above instagram video link but I got Optional("text/html") although its a video. However I got this urlResponse Optional("image/png") when I checked the mimeType for the below link. "https://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~ece533/images/zelda.png" — , Apr 08 '20 at 10:43
You get "text/html", because the web server indeed returns a _HTML_ page, which itself contains a video (more or less obfuscated to prevent downloading it directly, as I assume). If you want to access the video, you'll have to some _web scraping_ to parse the HTML and find out where the video itself is hidden inside. — Andreas Oetjen, Apr 08 '20 at 10:56

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '20 at 03:47

Instagram does not include the file format as you are looking for. Instead, you can use a simple trick to confirm if the link is representing a video or a photo. Thats the Instagram link you provided: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-PilcbFy2w/

When we add ?__a=1 at the end of the link of an Instagram post we will get something like this:

{"graphql":{"shortcode_media":{"__typename":"GraphImage",
"id":"2275681914071665931",
"shortcode":"B-U2KTOBc0L",
"dimensions":{"height":1080,
"width":1080},
"gating_info":null,
"fact_check_overall_rating":null,
"fact_check_information":null,
"sensitivity_friction_info":null,
"media_preview":"ACoq2XcL+PbvQ24KW6kDIHr7VDbKW/eN15C+w9fx/lUm/PIb/wAdNIb0GfaApxtYj1Cn/CnQzGXqrLgZ5GPwpd5/vf8AjpoLn+9/46aYiaimIc98/gR/On0ARxD92o6fKP5U3Jx/H+lMtX3QqRyQMEdORxT9vsf++v8A69A2Lk/7f5Cjn/b/ACH6UbT6H/vr/wCvRtPof++qBDkyeTu/4Fj+lPqNF29AR9Tnp0qSgDMg/djcw+R+cdSD/eq4EDjICFT0PNSOMg1nQsVn2g4BA4HT8qnbQrfUv7D3C/r/AIUeX/srn8f8KmoqiSJUA6gA9sVJS0UAf//Z",
"display_url":"https://instagram.fbah6-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.2885-15/e35/91790764_531125317547482_7904098713138015435_n.jpg?_nc_ht=instagram.fbah6-1.fna.fbcdn.net&_nc_cat=110&_nc_ohc=X8nt1F5JsVAAX_cmJQe&oh=a608b3496a9bef59e9d372ce339e496f&oe=5EB63B42",
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"config_height":640},
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 2020. Image may contain: text",
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you can easily search for the element "is_video", if it is false then the post is a picture, otherwise it is a video. please mark answered if helped.

works fine for instagram posts but appending ?__a=1 does not work for other social platforms. The instagram post link was just an example. I need it for every valid video, photo link. — , Apr 09 '20 at 05:12
@Naveed_05 You will not be able to have one code that recognizes the media of all social platforms. I recommend going through the source code of all social platforms and separating each one from the other with a specific recognition code just as I included. Best of luck! — Amjad Shubbar, Apr 09 '20 at 05:21

Check if a URL is a video URL or PHOTO URL

2 Answers2