Validate URLs via Regex?

Question

I have the following Regex

"^http\\\\://[a-zA-Z0-9\\\\-\\\\.]+\\\\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(/\\\\S*)?$";

But I'm not sure that it's validating URLs correctly. Is anyone able to assist me or see what's wrong with this?

Thanks

What paradigm are you using it? A lot of frameworks have this functionality built in. — Yuriy Faktorovich, Jun 20 '11 at 04:43

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:08

2

If you want a solid pattern read here.

Looks like Rakesh some good mods to your existing pattern; however, if I were you I would consider the aforementioned patterns because they are a bit more robust depending on your scenario.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:08

Community

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1

answered Jun 20 '11 at 04:53

Mike Veigel

3,795
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Rakesh Sankar · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-20T05:05:52.340

1

Try this, there a quite a bit of escapes "/" in your version

var subUrlSTR = "http://subdomain.stackoverflow.com";
var urlSTR = "http://stackoverflow.com";
var result = /http:\/\/[A-Za-z0-9\.-]{3,}\.[A-Za-z]{3}/;
console.log(subUrlSTR.match(result));
console.log(urlSTR.match(result));

See it working here

edited Jun 20 '11 at 05:05

answered Jun 20 '11 at 04:43

Rakesh Sankar

9,337
4
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thanks a lot :) I do only want to match http://*.example.com where * can be any valid ? So i.e. http://www.example.com or http://blog.example.com ? – Tom Jun 20 '11 at 05:01

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 20 '11 at 05:00

0

if (Uri.TryCreate(stringUrl, UriKind.Absolute, out uri))
{
    ...
}

answered Jun 20 '11 at 05:00

Yuriy Faktorovich

67,283
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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 08 '23 at 18:47

International & Modern Answer for 2023 And Beyond

Covering 99%+ URLs supported by modern browsers, that includes:

emojis in domain name and path
enforcing for top level domain: first character should be alpha but can have numbers afterwards, 2 characters minimum, up to the theoretical limit of 63, yet allowing underscores, accented characters and internationalized characters
world's most common languages alphabets, characters & diacritics in path & domain name. Includes English (duh), French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Bengali, Devenagri, Marathi, ~99% Chinese (CJK), Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Urdu, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic and all others that share their character sets with these
Added versions with and without support for IPv4 URLs that are also used and seen online & supported by all modern browsers

Use this to include the protocol ("http/https") & IPv4 URLs:

https?:\/\/(\b(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?):\d{1,5}\b|([-a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F@:%._\+~#=]{1,256})\.([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F\u0370-\u03ff\u1f00-\u1fff\u0400-\u04ff()-]{1,62}))\b([\/#][-a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F\u0370-\u03ff\u1f00-\u1fff\u0400-\u04ff\u0900-\u097F\u0600-\u06FF\u0985-\u0994\u0995-\u09a7\u09a8-\u09ce\u0981\u0982\u0983\u09e6-\u09ef\u0750-\u077F\uFB50-\uFDFF\uFE70-\uFEFF\u4E00-\u9FFFẸɓɗẹỊỌịọṢỤṣụ()@:%_\+.~#?&//=\[\]!\$'*+,;]*)?

Use this to include the protocol but not IPv4 addresses:

https?:\/\/([-a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F@:%._\+~#=]{1,256})\.([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F\u0370-\u03ff\u1f00-\u1fff\u0400-\u04ff()-]{1,62})\b([\/#][-a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F\u0370-\u03ff\u1f00-\u1fff\u0400-\u04ff\u0900-\u097F\u0600-\u06FF\u0985-\u0994\u0995-\u09a7\u09a8-\u09ce\u0981\u0982\u0983\u09e6-\u09ef\u0750-\u077F\uFB50-\uFDFF\uFE70-\uFEFF\u4E00-\u9FFFẸɓɗẹỊỌịọṢỤṣụ()@:%_\+.~#?&//=\[\]!\$'*+,;]*)?

To match domain names and paths (no IPv4):

([-a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F@:%._\+~#=]{1,256})\.([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F\u0370-\u03ff\u1f00-\u1fff\u0400-\u04ff()-]{1,62})\b([\/#][-a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F\u0370-\u03ff\u1f00-\u1fff\u0400-\u04ff\u0900-\u097F\u0600-\u06FF\u0985-\u0994\u0995-\u09a7\u09a8-\u09ce\u0981\u0982\u0983\u09e6-\u09ef\u0750-\u077F\uFB50-\uFDFF\uFE70-\uFEFF\u4E00-\u9FFFẸɓɗẹỊỌịọṢỤṣụ()@:%_\+.~#?&//=\[\]!\$'*+,;]*)?

Battle-Tested with all these Real-World & Theoretical Edge Cases:

// Check with a simple copy/paste in console!

const regexURLsAndIPs =
  /^https?:\/\/(\b(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?):\d{1,5}\b|([-a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F@:%._\+~#=]{1,256})\.([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F\u0370-\u03ff\u1f00-\u1fff\u0400-\u04ff()-]{1,62}))\b([\/#][-a-zA-Z0-9\u1F60-\uFFFF\u00C0-\u00D6\u00D8-\u00F6\u00F8-\u024F\u0370-\u03ff\u1f00-\u1fff\u0400-\u04ff\u0900-\u097F\u0600-\u06FF\u0985-\u0994\u0995-\u09a7\u09a8-\u09ce\u0981\u0982\u0983\u09e6-\u09ef\u0750-\u077F\uFB50-\uFDFF\uFE70-\uFEFF\u4E00-\u9FFFẸɓɗẹỊỌịọṢỤṣụ()@:%_\+.~#?&//=\[\]!\$'*+,;]*)?$/

const shouldMatch = [
  'https://base.com/',
  'http://t.co',
  'https://www.google.com.ua/',
  'https://subdomains.as.deep.as.you.want.example.com',
  'https://sub.second_leveldomain_underscore.verylongtoplevedomain/nice',
  'https://domain-name.com/path-common-characters/ABCxyz01789',
  'http://domaîn-with-àccents.ca',
  'http://path-with-accents.com/àèìòùçÇßØøÅåÆæœ',
  'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Möbius_strip',
  'http://www..tld/emojis--in--domain/-and-path-/',
  'https://y.at/',
  'https://hashtag.forpath#lets-go',
  "http://special.com/all-special-characters-._~:/?#[]@!$&'()*+,;=",
  'https://greek_with_diacritics.co/ΑαΒβΣσ/ςΤτϋΰήώΊΪΌΆΈΎΫΉΏᾶἀ',
  'https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ποσειδώνας_(πλανήτης)',
  'http://cyrillic-and-extras.ru/АаБбВвЪъыӸӹЫЯЯяѶѷ',
  'https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Заглавная_страница',
  'https://most-arabic.co/گچپژیلفقهموء-يجريبتج/',
  'https://urdu.co/حروفِ/',
  'https://nigerian.ni/ƁƊƎẸɓɗǝẹỊƘỌịƙọṢỤṣụ',
  'https://bengali.sports.co/স্পর্শঅনুনাসিকলসওষ্ঠ্যপফবভম/',
  'https://devenagri.cc/कखगघङचछजझञटठडढणतथदधनपफबभमयरलवशषस',
  'https://h.org/wiki/Wikipedia:关于中文维基百科/en',
  'https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:关于中文维基百科/en',
  'http://others.kr/korean-안녕ㆅㅇㄹㅿㆍㅡㅣㅗㅑㅠㅕ/japanese-一龠ぁゔａｚＡＺ０９々〆〤ヶ',
  'https://龠.subdomain.com',
  'http://127.0.0.1:22/valid-ip',
  'http://127.00.00.01:22/ugly-but-still-works-with-modern-browsers',
  'http://0.0.0.0:0/is-min',
  'https://255.255.255.255:0/is-max',
  'https://this.tld-is-63-characters-wich-is-the-theoretical-limit-000000000000',
]

const shouldNotMatch = [
  'noprotocol.com',
  ' https://space-in-front.com',
  'https://invalid.0om',
  'https://invalid.-om',
  'https://invalid-single-letter-tld.c',
  'https://invalid-domain&char.com',
  'https://invalid:com',
  'https://not valid.com',
  'https://not,valid.com',
  'https://龠.c龠',
  'https://invalidαΒβΣσ.com',
  'notvalid://www.google.com',
  'http://missing-tld',
  'https://0.0.0.0missing-port',
  '0.0.0.0:0/missing-protocol',
  'https://256.255.255.255:0/is-above-max',
  'https://this.tld-is-64-characters-which-is-too-looooooooooooooooooooooooooong',
]

function checkStringsMatchRegex(regex, array, shouldMatch = true) {
  for (let i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
    if (regex.test(array[i]) !== shouldMatch) {
      const matchStr = shouldMatch ? 'match' : 'not match'
      console.error('regex.test(array[i])', regex.test(array[i]))
      throw new Error(`String "${array[i]}" should ${matchStr} regex "${regex}"`)
    }
  }
  const successMatchingStr = shouldMatch ? 'matching all strings' : 'not matching a single string'
  console.log(`Success with ${successMatchingStr} in the test array.`)
}

checkStringsMatchRegex(regexURLsAndIPs, shouldMatch, true)
checkStringsMatchRegex(regexURLsAndIPs, shouldNotMatch, false)