Question

how to have an regex expression that matches ftp url in the format of this

ftp://user:name@server

I have data in the format of the above and need to run preg_match to make sure that I only return data in the above format

Answer 1

Dont use regex for this. Just use native parse_url function.

function check_ftp_url($url){
    $p = parse_url($url);
    return isset($p['scheme'])&& !strcasecmp($p['scheme'], 'ftp')
           &&isset($p['host'])
            &&isset($p['user'])&&isset($p['pass']);
}

Pros

1. It takes less time to write
2. You dont need to invest hours on regex to find a regex solution.
3. Its the proper way to check a url

Cons

1. You’ll need to write more characters than regex