What is the best regular expression to check if a

Question

How can I check if a given string is a valid URL address?

My knowledge of regular expressions is basic and doesn't allow me to choose from the hundreds of regular expressions I've already seen on the web.

Answer 1

Non-validating URI-reference Parser

For reference purposes, here's the IETF Spec: (TXT | HTML). In particular, Appendix B. Parsing a URI Reference with a Regular Expression demonstrates how to parse a valid regex. This is described as,

for an example of a non-validating URI-reference parser that will take any given string and extract the URI components.

Here's the regex they provide:

 ^(([^:/?#]+):)?(//([^/?#]*))?([^?#]*)(\?([^#]*))?(#(.*))?

As someone else said, it's probably best to leave this to a lib/framework you're already using.

Answer 2

        function validateURL(textval) {
            var urlregex = new RegExp(
            "^(http|https|ftp)\://([a-zA-Z0-9\.\-]+(\:[a-zA-Z0-9\.&%\$\-]+)*@)*((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]{1}[0-9]{2}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1}|[1-9])\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]{1}[0-9]{2}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1}|[1-9]|0)\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]{1}[0-9]{2}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1}|[1-9]|0)\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]{1}[0-9]{2}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1}|[0-9])|localhost|([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)*[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.(com|edu|gov|int|mil|net|org|biz|arpa|info|name|pro|aero|coop|museum|[a-zA-Z]{2}))(\:[0-9]+)*(/($|[a-zA-Z0-9\.\,\?\'\\\+&%\$#\=~_\-]+))*$");
            return urlregex.test(textval);
        }

Matches http://site.com/dir/file.php?var=moo | ftp://user:[e-mail]:21/file/dir

Non-Matches site.com | http://site.com/dir//

Answer 3

Here's what RegexBuddy uses.

(\b(https?|ftp|file)://)?[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%?=~_|!:,.;]+[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%=~_|]

It matches these below (inside the ** ** marks):

**http://www.regexbuddy.com**  
**http://www.regexbuddy.com/**  
**http://www.regexbuddy.com/index.html**  
**http://www.regexbuddy.com/index.html?source=library**  

You can download RegexBuddy at http://www.regexbuddy.com/download.html.

Answer 4

function validateURL(textval) {
            var urlregex = new RegExp(
            "^(http|https|ftp)\://[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(:[a-zA-Z0-9]*)?/?([a-zA-Z0-9\-\._\?\,\'/\\\+&%\$#\=~])*$");
            return urlregex.test(textval);
        }

Matches http://www.asdah.com/~joe | ftp://ftp.asdah.co.uk:2828/asdah%20asdah.gif | https://asdah.gov/asdh-ah.as

Answer 5

Mathias Bynens has a great article on the best comparison of a lot of regular expressions: In search of the perfect URL validation regex

The best one posted is a little long, but it matches just about anything you can throw at it.

JavaScript version

/^(?:(?:https?|ftp):\/\/)(?:\S+(?::\S*)?@)?(?:(?!(?:10|127)(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?!(?:169\.254|192\.168)(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?!172\.(?:1[6-9]|2\d|3[0-1])(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[01]\d|22[0-3])(?:\.(?:1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])){2}(?:\.(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-4]))|(?:(?:[a-z\u00a1-\uffff0-9]-*)*[a-z\u00a1-\uffff0-9]+)(?:\.(?:[a-z\u00a1-\uffff0-9]-*)*[a-z\u00a1-\uffff0-9]+)*(?:\.(?:[a-z\u00a1-\uffff]{2,}))\.?)(?::\d{2,5})?(?:[/?#]\S*)?$/i

PHP version

_^(?:(?:https?|ftp)://)(?:\S+(?::\S*)?@)?(?:(?!(?:10|127)(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?!(?:169\.254|192\.168)(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?!172\.(?:1[6-9]|2\d|3[0-1])(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[01]\d|22[0-3])(?:\.(?:1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])){2}(?:\.(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-4]))|(?:(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]-*)*[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)(?:\.(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]-*)*[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)*(?:\.(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]{2,}))\.?)(?::\d{2,5})?(?:[/?#]\S*)?$_iuS

Answer 6

This one works for me very well. (https?|ftp)://(www\d?|[a-zA-Z0-9]+)?\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(\:|\.)([a-zA-Z0-9.]+|(\d+)?)([/?:].*)?