How to validate an url on the iPhone

Question

In an iPhone app I am developing, there is a setting in which you can enter a URL, because of form & function this URL needs to be validated online as well as offline.

So far I haven't been able to find any method to validate the url, so the question is;

How do I validate an URL input on the iPhone (Objective-C) online as well as offline?

Answer 1

Why not instead simply rely on Foundation.framework?

That does the job and does not require RegexKit :

NSURL *candidateURL = [NSURL URLWithString:candidate];
// WARNING > "test" is an URL according to RFCs, being just a path
// so you still should check scheme and all other NSURL attributes you need
if (candidateURL && candidateURL.scheme && candidateURL.host) {
  // candidate is a well-formed url with:
  //  - a scheme (like http://)
  //  - a host (like stackoverflow.com)
}

According to Apple documentation :

URLWithString: Creates and returns an NSURL object initialized with a provided string.

+ (id)URLWithString:(NSString *)URLString

Parameters

URLString : The string with which to initialize the NSURL object. Must conform to RFC 2396. This method parses URLString according to RFCs 1738 and 1808.

Return Value

An NSURL object initialized with URLString. If the string was malformed, returns nil.

Answer 2

use this-

NSString *urlRegEx = @"http(s)?://([\\w-]+\\.)+[\\w-]+(/[\\w- ./?%&=]*)?";

Answer 3

Some URL's without / at the end are not detected as the correct one in the solutions above. So this might be helpful.

  extension String {
    func isValidURL() -> Bool{
        let length:Int = self.characters.count
        var err:NSError?
        var dataDetector:NSDataDetector? = NSDataDetector()
        do{
            dataDetector = try NSDataDetector(types: NSTextCheckingType.Link.rawValue)
        }catch{
            err = error as NSError
        }
        if dataDetector != nil{
            let range = NSMakeRange(0, length)
            let notFoundRange = NSRange(location: NSNotFound, length: 0)
            let linkRange = dataDetector?.rangeOfFirstMatchInString(self, options: NSMatchingOptions.init(rawValue: 0), range: range)
            if !NSEqualRanges(notFoundRange, linkRange!) && NSEqualRanges(range, linkRange!){
                return true
            }
        }else{
            print("Could not create link data detector: \(err?.localizedDescription): \(err?.userInfo)")
        }

        return false
    }
}

Answer 4

I solved the problem using RegexKit, and build a quick regex to validate a URL;

NSString *regexString = @"(http|https)://((\\w)*|([0-9]*)|([-|_])*)+([\\.|/]((\\w)*|([0-9]*)|([-|_])*))+";
NSString *subjectString = brandLink.text;
NSString *matchedString = [subjectString stringByMatching:regexString];

Then I check if the matchedString is equal to the subjectString and if that is the case the url is valid :)

Correct me if my regex is wrong ;)

Answer 5

Selfishly, I would suggest using a KSURLFormatter instance to both validate input, and convert it to something NSURL can handle.

Answer 6

Instead of writing your own regular expressions, rely on Apple's. I have been using a category on NSString that uses NSDataDetector to test for the presence of a link within a string. If the range of the link found by NSDataDetector equals the length of the entire string, then it is a valid URL.

- (BOOL)isValidURL {
    NSUInteger length = [self length];
    // Empty strings should return NO
    if (length > 0) {
        NSError *error = nil;
        NSDataDetector *dataDetector = [NSDataDetector dataDetectorWithTypes:NSTextCheckingTypeLink error:&error];
        if (dataDetector && !error) {
            NSRange range = NSMakeRange(0, length);
            NSRange notFoundRange = (NSRange){NSNotFound, 0};
            NSRange linkRange = [dataDetector rangeOfFirstMatchInString:self options:0 range:range];
            if (!NSEqualRanges(notFoundRange, linkRange) && NSEqualRanges(range, linkRange)) {
                return YES;
            }
        }
        else {
            NSLog(@"Could not create link data detector: %@ %@", [error localizedDescription], [error userInfo]);
        }
    }
    return NO;
}