Question

I have a URL validation method which works pretty well except that this url passes: “http://”. I would like to ensure that the user has entered a complete url like: “http://www.stackoverflow.com“.

Here is the pattern I’m currently using:

"^(https?://)"
+ "?(([0-9a-z_!~*'().&=+$%-]+: )?[0-9a-z_!~*'().&=+$%-]+@)?" //user@ 
+ @"(([0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}" // IP- 199.194.52.184 
+ "|" // allows either IP or domain 
+ @"([0-9a-z_!~*'()-]+\.)*" // tertiary domain(s)- www. 
+ @"([0-9a-z][0-9a-z-]{0,61})?[0-9a-z]\." // second level domain 
+ "[a-z]{2,6})" // first level domain- .com or .museum 
+ "(:[0-9]{1,4})?" // port number- :80 
+ "((/?)|" // a slash isn't required if there is no file name 
+ "(/[0-9a-z_!~*'().;?:@&=+$,%#-]+)+/?)$"

Any help to change the above to ensure that the user enters a complete and valid url would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

This is pretty much a FAQ. You could simply try a search with [regex] +validate +url or just look at this answer: What is the best regular expression to check if a string is a valid URL