Question

Totally new to programming so kindly excuse the silly question.
I have this URL http://www.blahblah.com/some/thing/blah..

Now i need the string that appears after the third”/” ie., just “/some/thing”..
I dont want to go from reverse as the URL is different for each page but the protocol and the host name is the same..
Is there a way i can extract “/some/thing” along using Javascript..
Appreciate any help..
Thanks!!

Answer 1

I would use a simple regular expression here.

One way to get stuff after the third “/” just throw it away with everything before it.

Basic idea:

"/a/b/c/d/e/f".replace(/.*?\/.*?\/s.*?\//, "")
// -> "c/d/e/f"

Alternative #1, to reduce repeat:

"/a/b/c/d/e/f".replace(/(?:.*?\/){3}/, "")     

Alternative #2, if input can contain newlines:

"/a/b/c/d/e/f".replace(/(?:[^\/]*\/){3}/, "")

The *? qualifier means “don’t be greedy” so . won’t skip over /‘s. It’s not needed in the negative character class case because [^\/] will never match /.

This could of course be written in a “less generic” form because because the real intent is just to git rid of the protocol/domain portions of the URI (the number of /‘s is only an observed relationship):

"http://foo/a/b/c/d/e/f".replace(/https?:\/\/[^\/]*\/?/i, "")
// -> "a/b/c/d/e/f"

Note that the last \/ has a ? after it so it will return “” for “http://foo” and the i is so it will match HTTP:// if that is used for some strange reason (completely optional, of course).

"HTTPS://foo".replace(/https?:\/\/[^\/]*\/?/i, "")
// -> ""

Happy coding!

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Note: all of the above regular expressions will extract the content after the 3rd /, as stated in the question. They will need to be slightly modified to include the 3rd / in the result. Also, it helps to not ask X-Y questions.