Regular expression pattern to match URL with or without http://www

Question

I'm not very good at regular expressions at all.

I've been using a lot of framework code to date, but I'm unable to find one that is able to match a URL like http://www.example.com/etcetc, but it is also is able to catch something like www.example.com/etcetc and example.com/etcetc.

Answer 1

For matching all kinds of URLs, the following code should work:

<?php
    $regex = "((https?|ftp)://)?"; // SCHEME
    $regex .= "([a-z0-9+!*(),;?&=$_.-]+(:[a-z0-9+!*(),;?&=$_.-]+)?@)?"; // User and Pass
    $regex .= "([a-z0-9\-\.]*)\.(([a-z]{2,4})|([0-9]{1,3}\.([0-9]{1,3})\.([0-9]{1,3})))"; // Host or IP address
    $regex .= "(:[0-9]{2,5})?"; // Port
    $regex .= "(/([a-z0-9+$_%-]\.?)+)*/?"; // Path
    $regex .= "(\?[a-z+&\$_.-][a-z0-9;:@&%=+/$_.-]*)?"; // GET Query
    $regex .= "(#[a-z_.-][a-z0-9+$%_.-]*)?"; // Anchor
?>

Then, the correct way to check against the regex is as follows:

<?php
   if(preg_match("~^$regex$~i", 'www.example.com/etcetc', $m))
      var_dump($m);

   if(preg_match("~^$regex$~i", 'http://www.example.com/etcetc', $m))
      var_dump($m);
?>

Courtesy: Comments made by splattermania in the PHP manual: preg_match

RegEx Demo in regex101

Answer 2

This worked for me in all cases I had tested:

$url_pattern = '/((http|https)\:\/\/)?[a-zA-Z0-9\.\/\?\:@\-_=#]+\.([a-zA-Z0-9\&\.\/\?\:@\-_=#])*/';

Tests:

http://test.test-75.1474.stackoverflow.com/
https://www.stackoverflow.com
https://www.stackoverflow.com/
http://wwww.stackoverflow.com/
http://wwww.stackoverflow.com


http://test.test-75.1474.stackoverflow.com/
http://www.stackoverflow.com
http://www.stackoverflow.com/
stackoverflow.com/
stackoverflow.com

http://www.example.com/etcetc
www.example.com/etcetc
example.com/etcetc
user:pass@example.com/etcetc

example.com/etcetc?query=aasd
example.com/etcetc?query=aasd&dest=asds

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6427530/regular-expression-pattern-to-match-url-with-or-without-http-www
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6427530/regular-expression-pattern-to-match-url-with-or-without-http-www/

Every valid Internet URL has at least one dot, so the above pattern will simply try to find any at least two strings chained by a dot and has valid characters that URL may have.

Answer 3

Try this:

/^http:\/\/|(www\.)?[a-z0-9]+([\-\.]{1}[a-z0-9]+)*\.[a-z]{2,5}(:[0-9]{1,5})?(\/.*)?$/

It works exactly like the people want.

It takes with or with out http://, https://, and www.

Answer 4

You can use a question mark after a regular expression to make it conditional so you would want to use:

http:\/\/(www\.)?

That will match anything that has either http://www. or http:// (with no www.)

You could just use a replace method to remove the above, thus getting you the domain. It depends on what you need the domain for.

Answer 5

Use:

/(https?://)?((?:(\w+-)*\w+)\.)+(?:[a-z]{2})(\/?\w?-?=?_?\??&?)+[\.]?([a-z0-9\?=&_\-%#])?/g

It matches something.com, http(s):// or www. It does not match other [something]:// URLs though, but for my purpose that's not necessary.

The regex matches e.g.:

http://foo.co.uk/
www.regex.com/foo.html?q=bar$some=thi-ng,regex
regex.foo.com/blog

Answer 6

Try something like this:

.*([\w-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,5}(/[\w-]+)*

Answer 7

You can try this:

r"(http[s]:\/\/)?([\w-]+\.)+([a-z]{2,5})(\/+\w+)? "

Selection:

1. may be start with http:// or https:// (optional)

2. anything (word) end with dot (.)

3. followed by 2 to 5 character [a-z]

4. followed by "/[anything]" (optional)

5. followed by space

Answer 8

Try this

$url_reg = /(ftp|https?):\/\/(\w+:?\w*@)?(\S+)(:[0-9]+)?(\/([\w#!:.?+=&%@!\/-])?)?/;

Answer 9

I have been using the following, which works for all my test cases, as well as fixes any issues where it would trigger at the end of a sentence preceded by a full-stop (end.), or where there were single character initials, such as 'C.C. Plumbing'.

The following regex contains multiple {2,}s, which means two or more matches of the previous pattern.

((http|https)\:\/\/)?[a-zA-Z0-9\.\/\?\:@\-_=#]{2,}\.([a-zA-Z0-9\&\.\/\?\:@\-_=#]){2,}

Matches URLs such as, but not limited to:

• https://example.com
• http://example.com
• example.com
• example.com/test
• example.com?value=test

Does not match non-URLs such as, but not limited to:

• C.C Plumber
• A full-stop at the end of a sentence.
• Single characters such as a.b or x.y

Please note: Due to the above, this will not match any single character URLs, such as: a.co, but it will match if it is preceded by a URL scheme, such as: http://a.co.

Answer 10

I was getting so many issues getting the answer from anubhava to work due to recent PHP allowing $ in strings and the preg match wasn't working.

Here is what I used:

// Regular expression
$re = '/((https?|ftp):\/\/)?([a-z0-9+!*(),;?&=.-]+(:[a-z0-9+!*(),;?&=.-]+)?@)?([a-z0-9\-\.]*)\.(([a-z]{2,4})|([0-9]{1,3}\.([0-9]{1,3})\.([0-9]{1,3})))(:[0-9]{2,5})?(\/([a-z0-9+%-]\.?)+)*\/?(\?[a-z+&$_.-][a-z0-9;:@&%=+\/.-]*)?(#[a-z_.-][a-z0-9+$%_.-]*)?/i';
// Match all
preg_match_all($re, $blob, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
// The first element of the array is the full match

Answer 11

This PHP Composer package URL highlight is doing a good job in PHP:

<?php
    use VStelmakh\UrlHighlight\UrlHighlight;

    $urlHighlight = new UrlHighlight();
    $matches = $urlHighlight->getUrls($string);
?>

Answer 12

If it does not have to be regex, you could always use the validate filters that are in PHP.

filter_var('http://example.com', FILTER_VALIDATE_URL);

filter_var (mixed $variable [, int $filter = FILTER_DEFAULT [, mixed $options ]]);

Types of Filters

Validate Filters

Answer 13

Regex if you want to ensure a URL starts with HTTP/HTTPS:

https?:\/\/(www\.)?[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%._\+~#=]{1,256}\.[a-zA-Z0-9()]{1,6}\b([-a-zA-Z0-9()@:%_\+.~#?&//=]*)

If you do not require the HTTP protocol:

[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%._\+~#=]{1,256}\.[a-zA-Z0-9()]{1,6}\b([-a-zA-Z0-9()@:%_\+.~#?&//=]*)