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RegEx to Match a URL

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Earlier today I needed URL input validation (my form prompted for a URL, I needed to validate that what was provided was a syntactically valid URL). URL validation is actually rather complicated, but the following regular expression worked for me:
https?://([-w.]+)+(:d+)?(/([w/_.]*(?S+)?)?)?
This one allows both http and https, supports an optional port, and allows paths and query strings too. Oh, it also works with both JavaScript (and can thus be used with ) and CFML.

14 responses to “RegEx to Match a URL”

  1. Peter Tilbrook Avatar
    Peter Tilbrook

    Great! I only just discovered the RegEx support in CF5 and above and this will come in very handy!
    Thanks Ben!

  2. seancorfield Avatar
    seancorfield

    A minor nit-pick: it doesn’t allow an optional username / password in the URL:
    http://uname:passw@domain.com/

  3. Sam Farmer Avatar
    Sam Farmer

    How about using it in the comments text to change urls into actual <a> links that open in a new window?

  4. Iain Avatar
    Iain

    How to parse a URL:
    (?:([^:/?#]+):)?(?://([^/?#]*))?([^?#]*)(?:?([^#]*))?(?:#(.*))?
    Captures end up being the scheme, authority, path, query and fragment.

  5. daa Avatar
    daa

    adsda

  6. Mohamed ElZahaby Avatar
    Mohamed ElZahaby

    I think this one will work better
    [-w.]+://([-w.]+)+(:d+)?(:w+)?(@d+)?(@w+)?([-w.]+)(/([w/_.]*(?S+)?)?)?

  7. Alexei Ramone Avatar
    Alexei Ramone

    Mohamed, your Regex is excellent, but I’ve found a little hole in the thing: it matches even if you’re doubling the protocol, e.g.:
    http://http://somesite.com.br/somewhere
    The worse part is that, in CFMX7 when you try to cfhttp it, the Java engine throws the exception:
    500 HTTPClient Internal Error: unexpected exception ‘HTTPClient.ParseException: somesite.com.br is an invalid port number’ HTTPClient Internal Error: unexpected exception ‘HTTPClient.ParseException: somesite.com.br is an invalid port number’
    It’s a Java Exception, not even a CFMX exception. I’ll try to fix this down, but i’m not as skilled as you guys here are in regexes….

  8. Alexei Ramone Avatar
    Alexei Ramone

    MY MISTAKE: the bug is triggered when parsing
    http://http//:some.damn.site.com.br
    the problem is Java is thinking some.damn.site.com.br is the protocol (because its after the second 🙂 and the regex is still validating it.

  9. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    Very good regex, I have been looking for this to replace the original Internet URL validation from the built-in that provided with .Net ver 2. This is very good replacement because it can suport port number

  10. Alessandro Avatar
    Alessandro

    The regular expression validates URL like the following:
    htp://www.mysite.com, or xyz://www.mysite.com
    The prefix protocol is wrong.
    In this way you can fix the problem:
    ((ht|f)tp(s?)://|~/|/)?([-w.]+)+(:d+)?(:w+)?(@d+)?(@w+)?([-w.]+)(/([w/_.]*(?S+)?)?)?
    I have another question: it accept URL with double ‘.’. Can it possible having an URl with double ‘.’?
    Thx.
    Alessandro.

  11. Jonah Chanticleer Avatar
    Jonah Chanticleer

    Thank you very much!
    I’d been beating my head against the wall for the better part of a night trying to get a RegEx recipe for URLs from O’Reilly’s pocket reference to work in REFindNoCase (but it had pound signs and other chars to which CF objected). Wish I’d found your RegEx first! 🙂

  12. CoosCoos Avatar
    CoosCoos

    This regex doesn’t work for URLs which have hyphens in the filename, such as http://www.mysite.com/this-is-my-page.cfm
    Any ideas how to enhance to handle this?

  13. Giambattista Avatar
    Giambattista

    Confirmed. Doesn’t work with hyphens.

  14. Neil Smith Avatar
    Neil Smith

    Just what I was looking for to valid URL input in a CMS system that I’ve recently built. Thanks again

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