Regular expression to find URLs within a string

Question

Does anyone know of a regular expression I could use to find URLs within a string? I've found a lot of regular expressions on Google for determining if an entire string is a URL but I need to be able to search an entire string for URLs. For example, I would like to be able to find www.google.com and http://yahoo.com in the following string:

Hello www.google.com World http://yahoo.com

I am not looking for specific URLs in the string. I am looking for ALL of the URLs in the string which is why I need a regular expression.

• Avatar: For PHP: preg_match_all('#\bhttps?://[^\s()<>]+(?:\([\w\d]+\)|([^[:punct:]\s]|/))#', $string, $match); from stackoverflow.com/q/910912/1066234
• Adrien Parrochia: you're example missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr

Answer 1

This is the one I use

(http|ftp|https):\/\/([\w_-]+(?:(?:\.[\w_-]+)+))([\w.,@?^=%&:\/~+#-]*[\w@?^=%&\/~+#-])

Works for me, should work for you too.

• Mark: Don't forget to escape the forward slashes.
• Michael Antipin: It's 2017, and unicode domain names are all over the place. \w may not match international symbols (depends on regex engine), the range is needed instead: a-zA-Z0-9\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF.
• Squazz: This is fine for general purpose, but there are many cases that it doesn't catch. This enforces that your links are prefixed with a protocol. If choose to ignore protocols, endings of emails are accepted as it is the case with [email protected].
• Sang: shouldn't [\w_-] be [\w-]? because \w matches _ already. per mozilla docs
• prayagupadhyay: Upvoted but This answer does not work what the question is asking www.yahoo.com. """(http|ftp|https)://([\w_-]+(?:(?:\.[\w_-]+)+))([\w.,@?^=%&:/~+#-]*[\w@?^=%&/~+#-])?""".r.findAllIn("www.google.com").toList . ALSO LACKS EXPLANATION for answer

Answer 2

Guess no regex is perfect for this use. I found a pretty solid one here

(?:(?:https?|ftp|file):\/\/|www\.|ftp\.)(?:\([-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|$?!:,.]*\)|[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|$?!:,.])*(?:\([-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|$?!:,.]*\)|[A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|$])

Some differences / advantages compared to the other ones posted here:

• It does not match email addresses
• It does match localhost:12345
• It won't detect something like moo.com without http or www

See here for examples

• Ihor Herasymchuk: it matches www.e This is not a valid url
• Huliax: The g option isn't valid in all regular expression implementations (e.g. Ruby's built-in implementation).
• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr

Answer 3

text = """The link of this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6038061/regular-expression-to-find-urls-within-a-string
Also there are some urls: www.google.com, facebook.com, http://test.com/method?param=wasd, http://test.com/method?param=wasd&params2=kjhdkjshd
The code below catches all urls in text and returns urls in list."""
urls = re.findall('(?:(?:https?|ftp):\/\/)?[\w/\-?=%.]+\.[\w/\-&?=%.]+', text)
print(urls)

Output:

[
 'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6038061/regular-expression-to-find-urls-within-a-string', 
 'www.google.com', 
 'facebook.com',
 'http://test.com/method?param=wasd',
 'http://test.com/method?param=wasd&params2=kjhdkjshd'
]

• Akshay Nandwana: Kotlin val urlRegex = "(?:(?:https?|ftp):\\/\\/)?[\\w/\\-?=%.]+\\.[\\w/\\-?=%.]+"
• TrophyGeek: Misses & parameters in the url. e.g. http://test.com/method?param=wasd&param2=wasd2 misses param2
• nicolasassi: also lacks support for URLs with #
• Alec: @TrophyGeek I think you just copied the regex from the first comment, and Akshay forgot to include the &. The right version would be: val urlRegex = "(?:(?:https?|ftp):\\/\\/)?[\\w/\\-?=%.]+\\.[\\w/\\-&?=%.]+"
• lukasniessen: This also thinks hello... is a URL

Answer 4

Wrote one up myself:

let regex = /([\w+]+\:\/\/)?([\w\d-]+\.)*[\w-]+[\.\:]\w+([\/\?\=\&\#\.]?[\w-]+)*\/?/gm

It works on ALL of the following domains:

https://www.facebook.com
https://app-1.number123.com
http://facebook.com
ftp://facebook.com
http://localhost:3000
localhost:3000/
unitedkingdomurl.co.uk
this.is.a.url.com/its/still=going?wow
shop.facebook.org
app.number123.com
app1.number123.com
app-1.numbEr123.com
app.dashes-dash.com
www.facebook.com
facebook.com
fb.com/hello_123
fb.com/hel-lo
fb.com/hello/goodbye
fb.com/hello/goodbye?okay
fb.com/hello/goodbye?okay=alright
Hello www.google.com World http://yahoo.com
https://www.google.com.tr/admin/subPage?qs1=sss1&qs2=sss2&qs3=sss3#Services
https://google.com.tr/test/subPage?qs1=sss1&qs2=sss2&qs3=sss3#Services
http://google.com/test/subPage?qs1=sss1&qs2=sss2&qs3=sss3#Services
ftp://google.com/test/subPage?qs1=sss1&qs2=sss2&qs3=sss3#Services
www.google.com.tr/test/subPage?qs1=sss1&qs2=sss2&qs3=sss3#Services
www.google.com/test/subPage?qs1=sss1&qs2=sss2&qs3=sss3#Services
drive.google.com/test/subPage?qs1=sss1&qs2=sss2&qs3=sss3#Services
https://www.example.pl
http://www.example.com
www.example.pl
example.com
http://blog.example.com
http://www.example.com/product
http://www.example.com/products?id=1&page=2
http://www.example.com#up
http://255.255.255.255
255.255.255.255
shop.facebook.org/derf.html

You can see how it performs here on regex101 and adjust as needed

• David Rector: Your regex missed this when I tested it. It only caught part of the URL: shop.facebook.org/derf.html
• wongx: @DavidRector Thanks! You are absolutely correct. I have updated the regex string and regex101 url based on your feedback. Added a \. at the end of the second last pair of square brackets [ ]
• Princy: This also matches any string of the form alphanum_char.alphanum_char, for example, a.r, b.4, 7.e, etc. These aren't valid URLs.
• Mike Kaply: Unfortunately this also matches times - 09:00
• Adrien Parrochia: your regex missed the case of the protocol is not specified as //www.leboncoin.fr

Answer 5

None of the solutions provided here solved the problems/use-cases I had.

What I have provided here, is the best I have found/made so far. I will update it when I find new edge-cases that it doesn't handle.

\b
 #Word cannot begin with special characters
 (?<![@.,%&#-])
 #Protocols are optional, but take them with us if they are present
 (?<protocol>\w{2,10}:\/\/)?
 #Domains have to be of a length of 1 chars or greater
 ((?:\w|\&\#\d{1,5};)[.-]?)+
 #The domain ending has to be between 2 to 15 characters
 (\.([a-z]{2,15})
 #If no domain ending we want a port, only if a protocol is specified
 |(?(protocol)(?:\:\d{1,6})|(?!)))
\b
#Word cannot end with @ (made to catch emails)
(?![@])
#We accept any number of slugs, given we have a char after the slash
(\/)?
#If we have endings like ?=fds include the ending
(?:([\w\d\?\-=#:%@&.;])+(?:\/(?:([\w\d\?\-=#:%@&;.])+))*)?
#The last char cannot be one of these symbols .,?!,- exclude these
(?<![.,?!-])

• einord: Is there any way to make this javascript friendly? As named capturing groups are not fully functional there, so the protocol value check does not validate.
• ThePuzzleMaster: @einord, I know this is way late, but you can just remove the named portion of the capturing group and it works fine in JS. /\b(?<![@.,%&#-])(\w{2,10}:\/\/)?((?:\w|&#\d{1,5};)[.-]?)+(\.([a-z]{2,15})|((?::\d{1,6})|(?!)))\b(?![@])(\/)?(?:([\w\d?\-=#:%@&.;])+(?:\/(?:([\w\d?\-=#:%@&;.])+))*)?(?<![.,?!-])/g

Answer 6

I think this regex (regular expression) pattern handle precisely what you want

(http|https|ftp|ftps)\:\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(\/\S*)?

and this is an snippet example to extract Urls:

// The Regular Expression filter
$reg_exUrl = "/(http|https|ftp|ftps)\:\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(\/\S*)?/";
// The Text you want to filter for urls
$text = "The text you want https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6038061/regular-expression-to-find-urls-within-a-string to filter goes here.";
// Check if there is a url in the text
preg_match_all($reg_exUrl, $text, $url,$matches);
var_dump($matches);

• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr

Answer 7

If you have to be strict on selecting links, I would go for:

(?i)\b((?:[a-z][\w-]+:(?:/{1,3}|[a-z0-9%])|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/)(?:[^\s()<>]+|\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,<>?«»""‘’]))

For more infos, read this:

An Improved Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs

• Auric: Don't do that. regular-expressions.info/catastrophic.html It'll kill your app...

Answer 8

All of the above answers are not match for Unicode characters in URL, for example: http://google.com?query=đức+filan+đã+search

For the solution, this one should work:

(ftp:\/\/|www\.|https?:\/\/){1}[a-zA-Z0-9u00a1-\uffff0-]{2,}\.[a-zA-Z0-9u00a1-\uffff0-]{2,}(\S*)

• mrswadge: Unicode characters were forbidden as per the RFC 1738 on URLs (faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1738.html). They would have to be percent encoded to be standards compliant - although I think it may have changed more recently - worth reading w3.org/International/articles/idn-and-iri
• Duc Filan: @mrswadge I just cover the cases. We're not sure if all people care about the standard. Thank you for your info.
• Krissh: Only this one worked perfectly for me having urls such as "example.com" "www.exmaple.com" "example.com" "example.co.in" "exmaple.com/?q='me'"
• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr
• Duc Filan: @Adrien Parrochia I don't think it's valid, isn't it?

Answer 9

I found this which covers most sample links, including subdirectory parts.

Regex is:

(?:(?:https?|ftp):\/\/|\b(?:[a-z\d]+\.))(?:(?:[^\s()<>]+|\((?:[^\s()<>]+|(?:\([^\s()<>]+\)))?\))+(?:\((?:[^\s()<>]+|(?:\(?:[^\s()<>]+\)))?\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,<>?«»""‘’]))?

• David Rector: When I tried this, the ends of sentences were marked as a match. In the above sentence, the last word "match" and the period were matched.

Answer 10

I used the regular expression below to find the url in a string:

(http|https)\:\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(\/\S*)?

• Toto: [a-zA-Z]{2,3} is really poor for matching TLD, see official list: data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt
• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr

Answer 11

IMPROVED

Detects Urls like these:

• https://www.example.pl
• http://www.example.com
• www.example.pl
• example.com
• http://blog.example.com
• http://www.example.com/product
• http://www.example.com/products?id=1&page=2
• http://www.example.com#up
• http://255.255.255.255
• 255.255.255.255
• http:// www.site.com:8008

Regex:

/^(?:http(s)?:\/\/)?[\w.-]+(?:\.[\w\.-]+)+[\w\-\._~:/?#[\]@!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=.]+$/gm

Please note that working with URLs and domain validation can be complex, and regex alone may not cover all edge cases. For more comprehensive URL validation, it's recommended to use specialized libraries or built-in URL validation functions provided by your programming language or framework.

• Guillaume F.: This will detect some expression such as "A.D." or "B.C." as urls though.
• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr

Answer 12

Short and simple. I have not tested in javascript code yet but It looks it will work:

((http|ftp|https):\/\/)?(([\w.-]*)\.([\w]*))

Code on regex101.com

Code preview

• Dagmar: I liked your regex because it was exactly what I was looking for: I needed to identify and strip URLs out of some text, not validate. Worked in rails.
• bafsar: @Dagmar I am glad to hear that :)
• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr
• bafsar: You are right @AdrienParrochia. When I posted this, I didn't check for it. Maybe I can do it later.

Answer 13

Using the regex provided by @JustinLevene did not have the proper escape sequences on the back-slashes. Updated to now be correct, and added in condition to match the FTP protocol as well: Will match to all urls with or without protocols, and with out without "www."

Code: ^((http|ftp|https):\/\/)?([\w_-]+(?:(?:\.[\w_-]+)+))([\w.,@?^=%&:\/~+#-]*[\w@?^=%&\/~+#-])?

Example: https://regex101.com/r/uQ9aL4/65

Answer 14

Here a little bit more optimized regexp:

(?:(?:(https?|ftp|file):\/\/|www\.|ftp\.)|([\w\-_]+(?:\.|\s*\[dot\]\s*[A-Z\-_]+)+))([A-Z\-\.,@?^=%&:\/~\+#]*[A-Z\-\@?^=%&\/~\+#]){2,6}?

Here is test with data: https://regex101.com/r/sFzzpY/6

enter image description here

• David Rector: Your test shows some of your URL's are not being detected fully. This entire string should be marked as a match: stackoverflow.com/questions/60619430/…
• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set : //www.google.fr

Answer 15

Wasn't easy one, but managed to compose a short and efficient regex pattern to match URLs, also captures email addresses. Hope that works for you.

((\bhttp(|s)|ftp|file):\/\/)|\bwww[ ]*\.[ ]*([a-zA-Z0-9%:?#@\/=_-]*)|([a-zA-Z0-9%:.?#@\/=_-]*)[ ]*\.[ ]*(com|eu|org|co|uk|pdf|etc)

This can be tested here regexr.com

• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr

Answer 16

If you have the url pattern, you should be able to search for it in your string. Just make sure that the pattern doesnt have ^ and $ marking beginning and end of the url string. So if P is the pattern for URL, look for matches for P.

• user758263: This is the regex I found that verifies if an entire string is a URL. I took out the ^ at the beggining and the $ at the end like you said and it still didn't work. What am I doing wrong? ^(http|https|ftp)\://[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(:[a-zA-Z0-9]*)?/?([a-zA-Z0-9\-\._\?,円\'/\\\+&%\$#\=~])*[^\.,円\)\(\s]$
• entonio: It might help if you showed what language you're using. Either way, be sure to check http://regexpal.com/; there you can test different expressions against your string until you get it right.
• manojlds: @user758263 - do you really need such a complex regex for the url? Depends on what the possible urls you might actually find. Also see gskinner.com/RegExr for trying out regex. They also have hundreds of samples on the right under the Community tab including ones for urls
• user758263: I'm trying to look for all possible URLs and I'm using C++. Thanks for the links entonio and manojlds. The gskinner site was especially helpful since it had samples.

Answer 17

A probably too simplistic, but working method might be:

[localhost|http|https|ftp|file]+://[\w\S(\.|:|/)]+

I tested it on Python and as long as the string parsing contains a space before and after and none in the url (which I have never seen before) it should be fine.

Here is an online ide demonstrating it

However here are some benefits of using it:

• It recognises file: and localhost as well as ip addresses
• It will never match without them
• It does not mind unusual characters such as # or - (see url of this post)

• Adrien Parrochia: you're regex missed the case of the protocol is not set //www.google.fr
• bobble bubble: [localhost|http|https|ftp|file]+ is a character class. I guess you wanted to use a group: (?:localhost|http|https|ftp|file) further \S non white space already includes \w,.,:,/ and even (,). You can as well use \b(?:https?|localhost|ftp|file)://\S+, it would match at least what probably was meant to match.

Answer 18

I liked Stefan Henze 's solution but it would pick up 34.56. Its too general and I have unparsed html. There are 4 anchors for a url;

www ,

http:\ (and co) ,

. followed by letters and then / ,

or letters . and one of these: https://ftp.isc.org/www/survey/reports/current/bynum.txt .

I used lots of info from this thread. Thank you all.

"(((((http|ftp|https|gopher|telnet|file|localhost):\\/\\/)|(www\\.)|(xn--)){1}([\\w_-]+(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)+))([\\w.,@?^=%&:\\/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&\\/~+#-])?)|(([\\w_-]{2,200}(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)*))((\\.[\\w_-]+\\/([\\w.,@?^=%&:\\/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&\\/~+#-])?)|(\\.((org|com|net|edu|gov|mil|int|arpa|biz|info|unknown|one|ninja|network|host|coop|tech)|(jp|br|it|cn|mx|ar|nl|pl|ru|tr|tw|za|be|uk|eg|es|fi|pt|th|nz|cz|hu|gr|dk|il|sg|uy|lt|ua|ie|ir|ve|kz|ec|rs|sk|py|bg|hk|eu|ee|md|is|my|lv|gt|pk|ni|by|ae|kr|su|vn|cy|am|ke))))))(?!(((ttp|tp|ttps):\\/\\/)|(ww\\.)|(n--)))"

Above solves just about everything except a string like "eurls:www.google.com,facebook.com,http://test.com/", which it returns as a single string. Tbh idk why I added gopher etc. Proof R code

if(T){
 wierdurl<-vector()
 wierdurl[1]<-"https://JP納豆.例.jp/dir1/納豆 "
 wierdurl[2]<-"xn--jp-cd2fp15c.xn--fsq.jp "
 wierdurl[3]<-"http://52.221.161.242/2018/11/23/biofourmis-collab"
 wierdurl[4]<-"https://12000.org/ "
 wierdurl[5]<-" https://vg-1.com/?page_id=1002 "
 wierdurl[6]<-"https://3dnews.ru/822878"
 wierdurl[7]<-"The link of this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6038061/regular-expression-to-find-urls-within-a-string
 Also there are some urls: www.google.com, facebook.com, http://test.com/method?param=wasd
 The code below catches all urls in text and returns urls in list. "
 wierdurl[8]<-"Thelinkofthisquestion:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6038061/regular-expression-to-find-urls-within-a-string
 Alsotherearesomeurls:www.google.com,facebook.com,http://test.com/method?param=wasd
 Thecodebelowcatchesallurlsintextandreturnsurlsinlist. "
 wierdurl[9]<-"Thelinkofthisquestion:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6038061/regular-expression-to-find-urls-within-a-stringAlsotherearesomeurlsZwww.google.com,facebook.com,http://test.com/method?param=wasdThecodebelowcatchesallurlsintextandreturnsurlsinlist."
 wierdurl[10]<-"1facebook.com/1res"
 wierdurl[11]<-"1facebook.com/1res/wat.txt"
 wierdurl[12]<-"www.e "
 wierdurl[13]<-"is this the file.txt i need"
 wierdurl[14]<-"xn--jp-cd2fp15c.xn--fsq.jpinspiredby "
 wierdurl[15]<-"[xn--jp-cd2fp15c.xn--fsq.jp/inspiredby "
 wierdurl[16]<-"xnto--jpto-cd2fp15c.xnto--fsq.jpinspiredby "
 wierdurl[17]<-"fsety--fwdvg-gertu56.ffuoiw--ffwsx.3dinspiredby "
 wierdurl[18]<-"://3dnews.ru/822878 "
 wierdurl[19]<-" http://mywebsite.com/msn.co.uk "
 wierdurl[20]<-" 2.0http://www.abe.hip "
 wierdurl[21]<-"www.abe.hip"
 wierdurl[22]<-"hardware/software/data"
 regexstring<-vector()
 regexstring[2]<-"(http|ftp|https)://([\\w_-]+(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)+))([\\w.,@?^=%&:/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&/~+#-])?"
 regexstring[3]<-"/(?:(?:https?|ftp|file):\\/\\/|www\\.|ftp\\.)(?:\\([-A-Z0-9+&@#\\/%=~_|$?!:,.]*\\)|[-A-Z0-9+&@#\\/%=~_|$?!:,.])*(?:\\([-A-Z0-9+&@#\\/%=~_|$?!:,.]*\\)|[A-Z0-9+&@#\\/%=~_|$])/igm"
 regexstring[4]<-"[a-zA-Z0-9\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF]?"
 regexstring[5]<-"((http|ftp|https)\\:\\/\\/)?([\\w_-]+(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)+))([\\w.,@?^=%&:/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&/~+#-])?"
 regexstring[6]<-"((http|ftp|https):\\/\\/)?([\\w_-]+(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)+))([\\w.,@?^=%&:\\/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&\\/~+#-])?"
 regexstring[7]<-"(http|ftp|https)(:\\/\\/)([\\w_-]+(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)+))([\\w.,@?^=%&:/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&/~+#-])?"
 regexstring[8]<-"(?:(?:https?|ftp|file):\\/\\/|www\\.|ftp\\.)(?:\\([-A-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|$?!:,.]*\\)|[-A-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|$?!:,.])*(?:\\([-A-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|$?!:,.]*\\)|[A-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|$])"
 regexstring[10]<-"((http[s]?|ftp):\\/)?\\/?([^:\\/\\s]+)((\\/\\w+)*\\/)([\\w\\-\\.]+[^#?\\s]+)(.*)?(#[\\w\\-]+)?"
 regexstring[12]<-"http[s:/]+[[:alnum:]./]+"
 regexstring[9]<-"http[s:/]+[[:alnum:]./]+" #in DLpages 230
 regexstring[1]<-"[[:alnum:]-]+?[.][:alnum:]+?(?=[/ :])" #in link_graphs 50
 regexstring[13]<-"^(?!mailto:)(?:(?:http|https|ftp)://)(?:\\S+(?::\\S*)?@)?(?:(?:(?:[1-9]\\d?|1\\d\\d|2[01]\\d|22[0-3])(?:\\.(?:1?\\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])){2}(?:\\.(?:[0-9]\\d?|1\\d\\d|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-4]))|(?:(?:[a-z\\u00a1-\\uffff0-9]+-?)*[a-z\\u00a1-\\uffff0-9]+)(?:\\.(?:[a-z\\u00a1-\\uffff0-9]+-?)*[a-z\\u00a1-\\uffff0-9]+)*(?:\\.(?:[a-z\\u00a1-\\uffff]{2,})))|localhost)(?::\\d{2,5})?(?:(/|\\?|#)[^\\s]*)?$"
 regexstring[14]<-"(((((http|ftp|https):\\/\\/)|(www\\.)|(xn--)){1}([\\w_-]+(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)+))([\\w.,@?^=%&:\\/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&\\/~+#-])?)|(([\\w_-]+(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)*))((\\.((org|com|net|edu|gov|mil|int)|(([:alpha:]{2})(?=[, ]))))|([\\/]([\\w.,@?^=%&:\\/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&\\/~+#-])?))))(?!(((ttp|tp|ttps):\\/\\/)|(ww\\.)|(n--)))"
 regexstring[15]<-"(((((http|ftp|https|gopher|telnet|file|localhost):\\/\\/)|(www\\.)|(xn--)){1}([\\w_-]+(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)+))([\\w.,@?^=%&:\\/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&\\/~+#-])?)|(([\\w_-]{2,200}(?:(?:\\.[\\w_-]+)*))((\\.[\\w_-]+\\/([\\w.,@?^=%&:\\/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&\\/~+#-])?)|(\\.((org|com|net|edu|gov|mil|int|arpa|biz|info|unknown|one|ninja|network|host|coop|tech)|(jp|br|it|cn|mx|ar|nl|pl|ru|tr|tw|za|be|uk|eg|es|fi|pt|th|nz|cz|hu|gr|dk|il|sg|uy|lt|ua|ie|ir|ve|kz|ec|rs|sk|py|bg|hk|eu|ee|md|is|my|lv|gt|pk|ni|by|ae|kr|su|vn|cy|am|ke))))))(?!(((ttp|tp|ttps):\\/\\/)|(ww\\.)|(n--)))"
 }
for(i in wierdurl){#c(7,22)
 for(c in regexstring[c(15)]) {
 print(paste(i,which(regexstring==c)))
 print(str_extract_all(i,c))
 }
}

Answer 19

I use this Regex:-

((\w+:\/\/\S+)|(\w+[\.:]\w+\S+))[^\s,\.]

It works fine for many URLs, including: http://google.com, https://dev-site.io:8080/home?val=1&count=100, www.regexr.com, localhost:8080/path, ...

Answer 20

I have utilize c# Uri class and it works, well with IP Address, localhost

 public static bool CheckURLIsValid(string url)
 {
 Uri returnURL;
 return (Uri.TryCreate(url, UriKind.Absolute, out returnURL)
 && (returnURL.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeHttp || returnURL.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeHttps));
 }

Answer 21

This regex is perfectly working for me, should work for you too

(http|ftp|https)://([\w_-]+(?:(?:\.[\w_-]+)+))([\w.,@?^=%&:/~+#-]*[\w@?^=%&/~+#-])?

Answer 22

This is a slight improvement on/adjustment to (depending on what you need) Rajeev's answer:

([\w\-_]+(?:(?:\.|\s*\[dot\]\s*[A-Z\-_]+)+))([A-Z\-\.,@?^=%&:/~\+#]*[A-Z\-\@?^=%&/~\+#]){2,6}?

See here for an example of what it does and does not match.

I got rid of the check for "http" etc as I wanted to catch url's without this. I added slightly to the regex to catch some obfuscated urls (i.e. where user's use [dot] instead of a "."). Finally I replaced "\w" with "A-Z" to and "{2,3}" to reduce false positives like v2.0 and "moo.0dd".

Any improvements on this welcome.

• Toto: [a-zA-Z]{2,3}is really poor for matching TLD, see official list: data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt. Also your regex matches _.........&&&&&& not sure it's a valid url.
• avjaarsveld: Thanks for that JE SUIS CHAELIE, any suggestions for improvement (especially for the false positive)?

Answer 23

I use the logic of finding text between two dots or periods

the regex below works fine with python

(?<=\.)[^}]*(?=\.)

Answer 24

Matching a URL in a text should not be so complex

(?:(?:(?:ftp|http)[s]*:\/\/|www\.)[^\.]+\.[^ \n]+)

https://regex101.com/r/wewpP1/2

Answer 25

I used this

^(https?:\\/\\/([a-zA-z0-9]+)(\\.[a-zA-z0-9]+)(\\.[a-zA-z0-9\\/\\=\\-\\_\\?]+)?)$

Answer 26

(?:vnc|s3|ssh|scp|sftp|ftp|http|https)\:\/\/[\w\.]+(?:\:?\d{0,5})|(?:mailto|)\:[\w\.]+\@[\w\.]+

If you want an explanation of each part, try in regexr[.]com where you will get a great explanation of every character.

This is split by an "|" or "OR" because not all useable URI have "//" so this is where you can create a list of schemes as or conditions that you would be interested in matching.

Answer 27

How about this one?

(http:\/\/|ftp:\/\/|https:\/\/|www\.)([\w_-]+(?:(?:\.[\w_-]+)+))([\w.,@?^=%&:\/~+#-]*[\w@?^=%&\/~+#-])?

It matches both in the question.

Answer 28

This slightly simpler version of GooDeeJAY's answer serves me well (and supports e.g. # and other characters at the expense of increasing 'false positives'):

import re
text = """The link of this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6038061/regular-expression-to-find-urls-within-a-string
Also there are some urls: www.google.com, facebook.com, http://test.com/method?param=wasd, http://test.com/method?param=wasd&params2=kjhdkjshd#changed
The code below catches all urls in text and returns urls in list."""
regex = r"(?i)(https?://|www.|\w+\.)[^\s]+"
urls = [match.group() for match in re.finditer(regex, text)]
print(urls)

and outputs

[
'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6038061/regular-expression-to-find-urls-within-a-string', 
'www.google.com,', 
'facebook.com,', 
'http://test.com/method?param=wasd,', 
'http://test.com/method?param=wasd&params2=kjhdkjshd#changed'
]

Answer 29

This expression also finds paths like: /path/text.html

(https?\:\/[^\"\'\n\<\>\;\)\s]*)|(www?\.[^\"\'\n\<\>\;\s]*)|([^\s\&\=\;,円\<\<\>\"\'\(\)]+\/[\w\/])([^\"\'\n\;\s]*)|((?<!\<)[\/]+[\w]+[^\'\"\s\<\>]*)

Answer 30

^(http|https|ftp|ftps)\:\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(\/\S*)?

This will verify the url link....