CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexurl
Aviel Shomron
Aviel Shomron

Reputation: 41

PHP Regex that matches regular, valid URLs only

I'm looking for a regex that matches valid, online URLs only.

For example:

exmaple.com
http://exmaple.com
https://exmaple.com
www.exmaple.com
http://www.example.com
https://www.example.com

And special domains and extensions like:

t.co
example.deals
sh.party

And so on, but won't match all the complicated stuff like ftp, get queries or URLs like 2.3.3.1.

I've been using '#(www\.|https?://)?[a-z0-9]+\.[a-z0-9]{2,4}\S*#i' but It detects dates, for example 3.3.2017.

I need this becuase I apply get_headers to every found URL, and when I do get_headers for invalid URLs like a date, I get:

get_headers(http://03.03.2017): failed to open stream: Connection timed out

TL;DR: I'm looking for a Regex that matches only URLs you can apply get_headers() on.

Thanks for helping!

Upvotes: 4

Views: 259

Answers (2)

JosefScript
JosefScript

Reputation: 600

#(https?:\/\/)?([a-z0-9_~-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,5}(\/\S*)?#i

EDIT: Third try: Optional http or https at start. After that follows at least one domain name and a dot, then a top-level domain of 2-5 letters and an optional tail of a backslash and additional non-space characters.

Upvotes: 1

fabionvs
fabionvs

Reputation: 197

I would say Regex is not the best solution for checking valid URL. It would be better to use FILTER_VALIDATE_URL:

<?php
 $url = "https://www.w3schools.com";

 if (!filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) === false) {
   echo("$url is a valid URL");
 } else {
   echo("$url is not a valid URL");
 }
 ?>

Upvotes: 2

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