PHP validation/regex for URL

Question

I\'ve been looking for a simple regex for URLs, does anybody have one handy that works well? I didn\'t find one with the zend framework validation classes and have seen sev

Answer 1

As per John Gruber (Daring Fireball):

Regex:

(?i)\b((?:https?://|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/)(?:[^\s()<>]+|\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'\".,<>?«»“”‘’]))

using in preg_match():

preg_match("/(?i)\b((?:https?://|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/)(?:[^\s()<>]+|\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'\".,<>?«»“”‘’]))/", $url)

Here is the extended regex pattern (with comments):

(?xi)
\b
(                       # Capture 1: entire matched URL
  (?:
    https?://               # http or https protocol
    |                       #   or
    www\d{0,3}[.]           # "www.", "www1.", "www2." … "www999."
    |                           #   or
    [a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/  # looks like domain name followed by a slash
  )
  (?:                       # One or more:
    [^\s()<>]+                  # Run of non-space, non-()<>
    |                           #   or
    \(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\)  # balanced parens, up to 2 levels
  )+
  (?:                       # End with:
    \(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\)  # balanced parens, up to 2 levels
    |                               #   or
    [^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,<>?«»“”‘’]        # not a space or one of these punct chars
  )
)

For more details please look at: http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matching_urls