Validating url with jQuery without the validate-plugin?

Question

I need to validate a url in variable with jQuery, but can\'t use validate-plugin. Is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

If you are sure that your audience is using HTML5, you can use type="url" to validate the text string. You could also dynamically create an input element, set the type and test whether the variable is valid URL or not.

The following is based on a blog post from https://www.raymondcamden.com/2016/10/19/using-html-form-validation-in-pure-javascript

var elm;
function isValidURL(u){
  if(!elm){
    elm = document.createElement('input');
    elm.setAttribute('type', 'url');
  }
  elm.value = u;
  return elm.validity.valid;
}

console.log(isValidURL('http://www.google.com/'));
console.log(isValidURL('//google.com'));
console.log(isValidURL('google.com'));