I've made a function (in JavaScript) that takes an URL from either YouTube or Vimeo. It figures out the provider and ID for that particular video (demo: http://jsfiddle.net/csjwf/).
function parseVideoURL(url) {
var provider = url.match(/http:\/\/(:?www.)?(\w*)/)[2],
id;
if(provider == "youtube") {
id = url.match(/http:\/\/(?:www.)?(\w*).com\/.*v=(\w*)/)[2];
} else if (provider == "vimeo") {
id = url.match(/http:\/\/(?:www.)?(\w*).com\/(\d*)/)[2];
} else {
throw new Error("parseVideoURL() takes a YouTube or Vimeo URL");
}
return {
provider : provider,
id : id
}
}
It works, however as a regex Novice, I'm looking for ways to improve it. The input I'm dealing with, typically looks like this:
http://vimeo.com/(id)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=(id)&blahblahblah.....
1) Right now I'm doing three separate matches, would it make sense to try and do everything in one single expression? If so, how?
2) Could the existing matches be more concise? Are they unnecessarily complex? or perhaps insufficient?
3) Are there any YouTube or Vimeo URL's that would fail being parsed? I've tried quite a few and so far it seems to work pretty well.
To summarize: I'm simply looking for ways improve the above function. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
about sawa's answer :
a little update on the second regex :
(escaping the dots prevents from matching url of type www_vimeo_com/… and $ added…)
here is the same idea for matching the embed urls :
Regex is wonderfully terse but can quickly get complicated.
http://jsfiddle.net/8nagx2sk/
Sometimes simple code is nicer to your fellow developers.
https://jsfiddle.net/1dzb5ag1/
Which do you prefer to update?