Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to validate an url on the iPhone

In Objective-C, does anyone have a good method to test if a given string appears to be a URL?

Answer 1

You can use a regular expression. For iPhone 3 and up, you can do it without a framework. Otherwise use RegexKitLite or something.

Here is a regex pattern for checking URLs:

"(http|https)://((\\w)*|([0-9]*)|([-|_])*)+([\\.|/]((\\w)*|([0-9]*)|([-|_])*))+"

Doing it without a framework:

- (BOOL)validateUrl:(NSString *)candidate {
    NSString *urlRegEx =
    @"(http|https)://((\\w)*|([0-9]*)|([-|_])*)+([\\.|/]((\\w)*|([0-9]*)|([-|_])*))+";
    NSPredicate *urlTest = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF MATCHES %@", urlRegEx]; 
    return [urlTest evaluateWithObject:candidate];
}