PHP regex for validating a URL

Question

I\'m looking for a decent regex to match a URL (a full URL with scheme, domain, path etc.) I would normally use filter_var but I can\'t in this case as I have to support PHP

Answer 1

You could try this one. I haven't tried it myself but it's surely the biggest regexp I've ever seen, haha.

^(?#Protocol)(?:(?:ht|f)tp(?:s?)\:\/\/|~\/|\/)?(?#Username:Password)(?:\w+:\w+@)?(?#Subdomains)(?:(?:[-\w]+\.)+(?#TopLevel Domains)(?:com|org|net|gov|mil|biz|info|mobi|name|aero|jobs|museum|travel|[a-z]{2}))(?#Port)(?::[\d]{1,5})?(?#Directories)(?:(?:(?:\/(?:[-\w~!$+|.,=]|%[a-f\d]{2})+)+|\/)+|\?|#)?(?#Query)(?:(?:\?(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:]|%[a-f\d{2}])+=?(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:=]|%[a-f\d]{2})*)(?:&(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:]|%[a-f\d{2}])+=?(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:=]|%[a-f\d]{2})*)*)*(?#Anchor)(?:#(?:[-\w~!$+|.,*:=]|%[a-f\d]{2})*)?$