How to remove 'http://' from a URL in JavaScript

Question

I have run into an odd situation. I'm writing a JavaScript bookmarklet that will allow users to click and share external websites to our website very easily and quickly. It simply get's the title, page URL, and if they've selected any text on the page, it grabs it too.

The problem is it doesn't work with external domains for some reason, so if we use it internally we end up with a share window with the URL formatted like this:

http://internaldomain.com/sharetool.php?shareid=http://internaldomain.com/anotheroddpage.html&title=....

That works just fine, BUT if we try to use an external domain and end up with a URL formatted like this:

http://internaldomain.com/sharetool.php?shareid=http://externaldomain.com/coolpagetoshare.html&title=...

Then we get a Forbidden Error on our page and can't load it... If we manually remove the http:// from the externaldomain address, it loads just fine again.

So.. I'm thinking the best solution to get around this problem is to modify the JavaScript bookmarklet to remove the http as it's loading the window. Here is how my current bookmarklet looks:

javascript:var d=document,w=window,e=w.getSelection,k=d.getSelection,x=d.selection,s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),f='http://internaldomain.com/sharetool.php',l=d.location,e=encodeURIComponent,u=f+'?u='+e(l.href)+

As you can see, e(l.href) is where the URL is passed.

How can I modify that so it removes the external domains http://?

score 222 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 25 '17 at 08:42

222

I think it would be better to take into account all possible protocols.

result = url.replace(/(^\w+:|^)\/\//, '');

edited Feb 25 '17 at 08:42

Forivin

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answered Nov 21 '11 at 01:21

FailedDev

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That worked like a charm '+e(l.href.replace(/.*?:\/\//g, "") – Peter Nov 21 '11 at 01:32
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This is a very poor regex. .*? - means ungreedy match, but /g modifier forces the expression to be applied many times (i.e. cut all found protocols?). Also expression has no ^ to match the start. Better one: /^.*?:\/\// – disjunction Mar 17 '14 at 15:22
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@disjunction Even ignoring your comments, that was precisely why this regex was written like this, as THIS is clearly stated in the answer. – FailedDev Mar 18 '14 at 09:41
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Please note that in real web pages relative protocol `//` is a common practice https://www.paulirish.com/2010/the-protocol-relative-url/. So I suggest regexp `/^\/\/|^.*?:\/\//` (you can make it better I'm sure) – Dan Nov 07 '16 at 10:19
@Dan, good call! So let's take it even further and make this work with 'mailto:' with this edit: `.replace(/^\/\/|^.*?:(\/\/)?/, '');` – gdibble Aug 24 '17 at 19:11
still does not support a case of '//:www.google.com' – Vad.Gut Jun 11 '18 at 10:58
One question, why do we need a alternation in this regex? why not just `(^\w+:|^)` ? – Rahul Aug 02 '18 at 14:06
Umm... // denotes the start of a comment in js. So `//, '');` and everything after it in the line becomes a comment. – user756659 Feb 20 '19 at 19:44

score 59 · Answer 2 · edited May 25 '21 at 20:18

59

url = url.replace(/^https?:\/\//, '')

edited May 25 '21 at 20:18

Darryl Hein

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answered Nov 21 '11 at 01:17

matsko

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small improvement: `/^(https?:|)\/\//` – Artem P May 03 '16 at 15:07
Works great thanks, for easier use: let removeHttp = function(link) { return link.replace(/^(https?:|)\/\//, ''); }; let string = removeHttp(link); – Edgar Quintero May 28 '18 at 16:26
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`url.replace(/^(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?/i, "").split('.')[0]` This will take care of `http`, `https` and `www` – SirPhemmiey Aug 28 '19 at 18:43
@SirPhemmiey Nah, that ended up removing subdomains for me – dem Mar 30 '22 at 23:43

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 21 '11 at 01:19

7

l.href.replace(/^http:\/\//, '')

answered Nov 21 '11 at 01:19

shyam

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score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 14 '14 at 12:17

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I think the regular expression you need is /(?:http://)(.*)/i. The first match of this should be it.

edited Sep 14 '14 at 12:17

Peter Mortensen

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answered Nov 21 '11 at 01:18

idanzalz

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score -6 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 05 '15 at 15:43

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Try using replace function

var url = url.replace("http%3A%2F%2F", "");

edited Mar 05 '15 at 15:43

Ram

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answered Mar 05 '15 at 15:09

Mindaugas Karla

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This is unideal for the lack of Regular Expression usage. With simple text-replacement like this, you would need to chain several `.replace()` function calls to accomodate all the different variations needed (http/https/ etcetera..) – gdibble Aug 24 '17 at 19:13

How to remove 'http://' from a URL in JavaScript

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