Find Any Url In Text String Exactly Like Twitter Uses

October 26, 2023 Post a Comment

There are many similar questions, however they don't answer the problem of a url not having www., http://, etc. What I'm looking to do is check whether or not a string contains a u

Solution 1:

I don't think there's a good way to do this reliably (over time). Now that the new gTLDs are coming, it's going to be hard to keep up. Anyway, I gave it a shot.

/
  (
    \b
      (?:(https?|ftp):\/\/)?
      (
        (?:www\d{0,3}\.)?
        (
          [a-z0-9.-]+\.
          (?:[a-z]{2,4}|museum|travel)
          (?:\/[^\/\s]+)*
        )
      )
    \b
  )
/ix

Capture groups

The entire URL, ex: http://www.google.com/anyquerystringSAY/Rfy/srA/yh
The protocol, ex: http
URL including www., ex: www.google.com/swrua8rua8rUWRWAURHAJSrjuhFAhjT/Rtgfsbdh
URL excluding www., ex: google.com/sarwar8wa8r/R/A(R8 or images.google.com/w9r89w9ar8a9sjfriJRIUS(RY/(YUr

Optionally, you can replace the (?:[a-z]{2,4}|museum|travel) bit with all the ones listed here, but that list is never going to stop growing, so I doubt it's worth it. (You can see I added the two exceptions museum and travel.)

Also notice I added ftp, feel free to remove that if you don't need it.

Hope this helps.

See it in action

Solution 2:

(# Scheme
 [a-z][a-z0-9+\-.]*:
 (# Authority & path
  //
  ([a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=]+@)?              # User
  ([a-z0-9\-._~%]+                            # Named host
  |\[[a-f0-9:.]+\]                            # IPv6 host
  |\[v[a-f0-9][a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:]+\])  # IPvFuture host
  (:[0-9]+)?                                  # Port
  (/[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)*/?          # Path
 |# Path without authority
  (/?[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+(/[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)*/?)?
 )
|# Relative URL (no scheme or authority)
 ([a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=@]+(/[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)*/?  # Relative path
 |(/[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)+/?)                            # Absolute path
)
# Query(\?[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?# Fragment(\#[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?

RFC 3986. Validate if a string holds a URL as specified in RFC 3986. Both absolute and relative URLs are supported.

Solution 3:

The answer is - you can't.

Twitter, for example treats the name of the singer Will.I.Am as a URL (.am is a valid tld).

Without knowing all the domain registration rules at every tld, there's no way of knowing if a URL is valid without testing.

Here is what I propose you do.

Be generous with your script. Accept almost any string with a "." in it.
Perform an HTTP HEAD request to see whether the URL exists.
Do a WHOIS to see if the domain has been registered (even if the exact URL doens't match)

Of course, this doesn't take in to account that someone may have posted a link to their Intranet - which would work for some of their followers.

Solution 4:

My simple JavaScript library called FuncJS has a function called "findLinks()" which should be able to get done what you're wanting.

Say that you have a string with links inside it, simply include in the function parameters, like this:

findLinks("Visit my website at http://website.com and visit my profile on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yourProfile!");

And then output it using various methods, such as document.write and the string should be outputted with links highlighted.

For a greater understanding of this function, please read the documentation at http://docs.funcjs.webege.com/findLinks().html.

Hope this helps you out and anyone else wanting to do this! :)

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