CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexfacebookurl
Josh Deeden
Josh Deeden

Reputation: 1690

Facebook profile URL regular expression

Given the following Facebook profile and page URLs, my intent is to extract profile ids or usernames into the first match position. 

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789  
http://www.facebook.com/someusername  
www.facebook.com/pages/Regular-Expressions/207279373093

The regex I have so far looks like this: 

(?:http:\/\/)?(?:www.)?facebook.com\/(?:(?:\w)*#!\/)?(?:pages\/)?(?:[?\w\-]*\/)?(?:profile.php\?id=(\d.*))?([\w\-]*)?

Which produces the following results:

Result 1:

  1. 123456789
  2.  

Result 2:

  1.  
  2. someusername

Result 3:

  1.  
  2. 207279373093

The ideal outcome would look like:

Result 1:

  1. 123456789

Result 2:

  1. someusername

Result 3:

  1. 207279373093

That is to say, I'd like to have the profile identifier to always be returned in the first position.

It would also be ideal of www.facebook.com/ and facebook.com/ didn't match either.

Upvotes: 25

Views: 54412

Answers (9)

Haim
Haim

Reputation: 338

I am not sure why I got highly invested in this even though it's not really something I need or missing a solution But I added an ultra fine solution combining all rules + do not allow consecutive periods nor profiles that has less than 5 characters

Check out my regex here: https://regex101.com/r/6OQYWr/2
(You can check out the unit tests section for seeing all of the cases it handles)

Upvotes: 0

jkmartindale
jkmartindale

Reputation: 557

I've tried every single answer above and each one doesn't work for at least one reason. This most likely won't be helpful to OP, but if anybody like me finds this in a web search, I believe this is the correct answer:

^(?:.*)\/(?:pages\/[A-Za-z0-9-]+\/)?(?:profile\.php\?id=)?([A-Za-z0-9.]+)

Supports basically everything I can think of, except verifying that the domain contains facebook.com. If you need to check if the URL is valid, this should be done outside of a regular expression to make sure the page or profile actually exists. Why check it twice, especially when one of the checks is incomplete?

  • Doesn't cut off the first character
  • Grabs URLs with periods
  • Ignores superfluous GET parameters
  • Supports /usernames as provided by the Facebook app
  • Supports both profile URL structures
  • Doesn't match facebook.com/ or facebook.com (by ignoring them)
  • Works with and without www. (by ignoring it)
  • Supports both http and https (by ignoring them)
  • Supports both facebook.com and fb.com (by ignoring them)
  • Supports pages with special characters in the name (by ignoring them)
  • Supports #! (by ignoring it)
  • Supports bounce_page#! (by ignoring it)

Upvotes: 6

spa900
spa900

Reputation: 947

Regex that will correctly identify profile pages with a . in the name like www.facebook.com/my.name and it will also exclude www.facebook.com/ or home.php as it is not a valid facebook page.

https://regex101.com/r/koN8C2/2

(?:(?:http|https):\/\/)?(?:www.|m.)?facebook.com\/(?!home.php)(?:(?:\w)*#!\/)?(?:pages\/)?(?:[?\w\-]*\/)?(?:profile.php\?id=(?=\d.*))?([\w\.-]+)

Let me know if you found any that are not matched.

Upvotes: 0

Alex Z
Alex Z

Reputation: 93

Only this regular expression works correctly for all FB URLs:

/(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?(?:facebook|fb|m\.facebook)\.(?:com|me)\/(?:(?:\w)*#!\/)?(?:pages\/)?(?:[\w\-]*\/)*([\w\-\.]+)(?:\/)?/i

Upvotes: 9

n00b
n00b

Reputation: 5732

I'd recommend Rad Software Regular Expression Designer.

Also this online tool is great https://regex101.com/ ( though most people prefer http://regexr.com/ )

(?:(?:http|https):\/\/)?(?:www.)?facebook.com\/(?:(?:\w)*#!\/)?(?:pages\/)?(?:[?\w\-]*\/)?(?:profile.php\?id=(?=\d.*))?([\w\-]*)?

Upvotes: 23

Vanson
Vanson

Reputation: 17

This works well for me. It can detect personal profile url, and exclude all the fan pages, and groups.

.+www.facebook.com\/[^\/]+$

enter image description here

Upvotes: -2

Sender
Sender

Reputation: 6858

Matches facebook.com, m.facebook.com, mbasic.facebook.com and fb.me (short link)

/(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?(mbasic.facebook|m\.facebook|facebook|fb)\.(com|me)\/(?:(?:\w\.)*#!\/)?(?:pages\/)?(?:[\w\-\.]*\/)*([\w\-\.]*)/ig

Facebook URL regex DEMO

Facebook URL regex DEMO

Upvotes: 4

Iman Sedighi
Iman Sedighi

Reputation: 8192

The most completed pattern for Facebook profile url:

/(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?facebook\.com\/.(?:(?:\w)*#!\/)?(?:pages\/)?(?:[\w\-]*\/)*([\w\-\.]*)/

It detects all the cases + one important difference. Other regex patterns recognize http://www.facebook.com/ as a valid Facebook Profile URL while it is not a valid Profile url. It is just the original Facebook URL and not a user or page address. But this regex can distinguish a normal url from a profile and page url and only accepts the valid one.

Upvotes: 5

marcgg
marcgg

Reputation: 66465

I made a gist a while back that works fine against the given examples:

# Matches patterns such as:
#    http://www.facebook.com/my_page_id => my_page_id
#    http://www.facebook.com/#!/my_page_id => my_page_id
#    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Paris-France/Vanity-Url/123456?v=app_555 => 45678
#    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vanity-Url/45678 => 45678
#    http://www.facebook.com/#!/page_with_1_number => page_with_1_number
#    http://www.facebook.com/bounce_page#!/pages/Vanity-Url/45678 => 45678
#    http://www.facebook.com/bounce_page#!/my_page_id?v=app_166292090072334 => my_page_id

/(?:http:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?facebook\.com\/(?:(?:\w)*#!\/)?(?:pages\/)?(?:[\w\-]*\/)*([\w\-]*)/

To get the latest version: https://gist.github.com/733592

Upvotes: 10

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