Question

I can’t get this function working correctly:

function isValidURL($url){
 return preg_match('%http://domain\.com/([A-Za-z0-9.-_]+)/([A-Za-z0-9.-_]+)%', $url);
}

The url:

http://domain.com/anything-12/anything-12/

can contain numbers, letters and symbols _ –

I assume its to do with the first regex – as these work

    http://domain.com/anything12/anything12/

    http://domain.com/anything12/anything-12/

    http://domain.com/anything12/any-thing-12/

    http://domain.com/anything_12/any-thing-12/

As always all help is appreciated and thanks in advance.

Answer 1

1. You need to escape the - in the character class of your regex.

2. You need to anchor your regex so that tries to match the entire input string and not part of it.

The modified regex is:

'%^http://domain\.com/([A-Za-z0-9.\-_]+)/([A-Za-z0-9.\-_]+)/$%'

You can shorten your regex by noting that [A-Za-z0-9_] is same as \w and also there is a repeating sub-regex.

'%^http://domain\.com(/[\w.-]+){2}/$%'