用ChatGPT解决这个技术问题 Extra ChatGPT

What is the best regular expression to check if a string is a valid URL?

How can I check if a given string is a valid URL address?

My knowledge of regular expressions is basic and doesn't allow me to choose from the hundreds of regular expressions I've already seen on the web.

Any URL or just HTTP? E.g. does mailto:me@example.com count as a URL? A a AIM chat link?
If a URL has no leading "http(etc)", how would you be able to distinguish it from any other arbitrary string that happens to have dots in it? Say something like "MyClass.MyProperty.MyMethod"? Or "I somtimes miss the spacebar.is this a problem?"
Microsoft has a Regex page that includes an expression for URLs. Surely a good start: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff650303.aspx NB. The above page is retired, but the expressions in the table are essentially still valid for reference. The URL expression recommended (and which worked great for me) is: "^(ht|f)tp(s?)\:\/\/[0-9a-zA-Z]([-.\w]*[0-9a-zA-Z])*(:(0-9)*)*(\/?)([a-zA-Z0-9\-\.\?\,\'\/\\\+&%\$#_]*)?$"

i
iTakeshi

I wrote my URL (actually IRI, internationalized) pattern to comply with RFC 3987 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3987.html). These are in PCRE syntax.

For absolute IRIs (internationalized): 

/^[a-z](?:[-a-z0-9\+\.])*:(?:\/\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:])*@)?(?:\[(?:(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){6}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){5}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){4}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,1}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){3}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,2}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){2}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,3}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::[0-9a-f]{1,4}:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,4}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,5}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,6}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::)|v[0-9a-f]+\.[-a-z0-9\._~!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:]+)\]|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3}|(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=])*)(?::[0-9]*)?(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*|\/(?:(?:(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))+)(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*)?|(?:(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))+)(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*|(?!(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])))(?:\?(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])|[\x{E000}-\x{F8FF}\x{F0000}-\x{FFFFD}\x{100000}-\x{10FFFD}\/\?])*)?(?:\#(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])|[\/\?])*)?$/i

To also allow relative IRIs: 

/^(?:[a-z](?:[-a-z0-9\+\.])*:(?:\/\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:])*@)?(?:\[(?:(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){6}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){5}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){4}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,1}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){3}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,2}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){2}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,3}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::[0-9a-f]{1,4}:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,4}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,5}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,6}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::)|v[0-9a-f]+\.[-a-z0-9\._~!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:]+)\]|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3}|(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=])*)(?::[0-9]*)?(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*|\/(?:(?:(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))+)(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*)?|(?:(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))+)(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*|(?!(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])))(?:\?(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])|[\x{E000}-\x{F8FF}\x{F0000}-\x{FFFFD}\x{100000}-\x{10FFFD}\/\?])*)?(?:\#(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])|[\/\?])*)?|(?:\/\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:])*@)?(?:\[(?:(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){6}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){5}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){4}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,1}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){3}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,2}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){2}(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,3}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::[0-9a-f]{1,4}:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,4}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3})|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,5}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::[0-9a-f]{1,4}|(?:(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:){0,6}[0-9a-f]{1,4})?::)|v[0-9a-f]+\.[-a-z0-9\._~!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:]+)\]|(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?:\.(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])){3}|(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=])*)(?::[0-9]*)?(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*|\/(?:(?:(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))+)(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*)?|(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=@])+)(?:\/(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@]))*)*|(?!(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])))(?:\?(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])|[\x{E000}-\x{F8FF}\x{F0000}-\x{FFFFD}\x{100000}-\x{10FFFD}\/\?])*)?(?:\#(?:(?:%[0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|[-a-z0-9\._~\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}!\$&'\(\)\*\+,;=:@])|[\/\?])*)?)$/i

How they were compiled (in PHP): 

<?php

/* Regex convenience functions (character class, non-capturing group) */
function cc($str, $suffix = '', $negate = false) {
    return '[' . ($negate ? '^' : '') . $str . ']' . $suffix;
}
function ncg($str, $suffix = '') {
    return '(?:' . $str . ')' . $suffix;
}

/* Preserved from RFC3986 */

$ALPHA = 'a-z';
$DIGIT = '0-9';
$HEXDIG = $DIGIT . 'a-f';

$sub_delims = '!\\$&\'\\(\\)\\*\\+,;=';
$gen_delims = ':\\/\\?\\#\\[\\]@';
$reserved = $gen_delims . $sub_delims;
$unreserved = '-' . $ALPHA . $DIGIT . '\\._~';

$pct_encoded = '%' . cc($HEXDIG) . cc($HEXDIG);

$dec_octet = ncg(implode('|', array(
    cc($DIGIT),
    cc('1-9') . cc($DIGIT),
    '1' . cc($DIGIT) . cc($DIGIT),
    '2' . cc('0-4') . cc($DIGIT),
    '25' . cc('0-5')
)));

$IPv4address = $dec_octet . ncg('\\.' . $dec_octet, '{3}');

$h16 = cc($HEXDIG, '{1,4}');
$ls32 = ncg($h16 . ':' . $h16 . '|' . $IPv4address);

$IPv6address = ncg(implode('|', array(
    ncg($h16 . ':', '{6}') . $ls32,
    '::' . ncg($h16 . ':', '{5}') . $ls32,
    ncg($h16, '?') . '::' . ncg($h16 . ':', '{4}') . $ls32,
    ncg($h16 . ':' . $h16, '?') . '::' . ncg($h16 . ':', '{3}') . $ls32,
    ncg(ncg($h16 . ':', '{0,2}') . $h16, '?') . '::' . ncg($h16 . ':', '{2}') . $ls32,
    ncg(ncg($h16 . ':', '{0,3}') . $h16, '?') . '::' . $h16 . ':' . $ls32,
    ncg(ncg($h16 . ':', '{0,4}') . $h16, '?') . '::' . $ls32,
    ncg(ncg($h16 . ':', '{0,5}') . $h16, '?') . '::' . $h16,
    ncg(ncg($h16 . ':', '{0,6}') . $h16, '?') . '::',
)));

$IPvFuture = 'v' . cc($HEXDIG, '+') . cc($unreserved . $sub_delims . ':', '+');

$IP_literal = '\\[' . ncg(implode('|', array($IPv6address, $IPvFuture))) . '\\]';

$port = cc($DIGIT, '*');

$scheme = cc($ALPHA) . ncg(cc('-' . $ALPHA . $DIGIT . '\\+\\.'), '*');

/* New or changed in RFC3987 */

$iprivate = '\x{E000}-\x{F8FF}\x{F0000}-\x{FFFFD}\x{100000}-\x{10FFFD}';

$ucschar = '\x{A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}' .
    '\x{10000}-\x{1FFFD}\x{20000}-\x{2FFFD}\x{30000}-\x{3FFFD}' .
    '\x{40000}-\x{4FFFD}\x{50000}-\x{5FFFD}\x{60000}-\x{6FFFD}' .
    '\x{70000}-\x{7FFFD}\x{80000}-\x{8FFFD}\x{90000}-\x{9FFFD}' .
    '\x{A0000}-\x{AFFFD}\x{B0000}-\x{BFFFD}\x{C0000}-\x{CFFFD}' .
    '\x{D0000}-\x{DFFFD}\x{E1000}-\x{EFFFD}';

$iunreserved = '-' . $ALPHA . $DIGIT . '\\._~' . $ucschar;

$ipchar = ncg($pct_encoded . '|' . cc($iunreserved . $sub_delims . ':@'));

$ifragment = ncg($ipchar . '|' . cc('\\/\\?'), '*');

$iquery = ncg($ipchar . '|' . cc($iprivate . '\\/\\?'), '*');

$isegment_nz_nc = ncg($pct_encoded . '|' . cc($iunreserved . $sub_delims . '@'), '+');
$isegment_nz = ncg($ipchar, '+');
$isegment = ncg($ipchar, '*');

$ipath_empty = '(?!' . $ipchar . ')';
$ipath_rootless = ncg($isegment_nz) . ncg('\\/' . $isegment, '*');
$ipath_noscheme = ncg($isegment_nz_nc) . ncg('\\/' . $isegment, '*');
$ipath_absolute = '\\/' . ncg($ipath_rootless, '?'); // Spec says isegment-nz *( "/" isegment )
$ipath_abempty = ncg('\\/' . $isegment, '*');

$ipath = ncg(implode('|', array(
    $ipath_abempty,
    $ipath_absolute,
    $ipath_noscheme,
    $ipath_rootless,
    $ipath_empty
))) . ')';

$ireg_name = ncg($pct_encoded . '|' . cc($iunreserved . $sub_delims . '@'), '*');

$ihost = ncg(implode('|', array($IP_literal, $IPv4address, $ireg_name)));
$iuserinfo = ncg($pct_encoded . '|' . cc($iunreserved . $sub_delims . ':'), '*');
$iauthority = ncg($iuserinfo . '@', '?') . $ihost . ncg(':' . $port, '?');

$irelative_part = ncg(implode('|', array(
    '\\/\\/' . $iauthority . $ipath_abempty . '',
    '' . $ipath_absolute . '',
    '' . $ipath_noscheme . '',
    '' . $ipath_empty . ''
)));

$irelative_ref = $irelative_part . ncg('\\?' . $iquery, '?') . ncg('\\#' . $ifragment, '?');

$ihier_part = ncg(implode('|', array(
    '\\/\\/' . $iauthority . $ipath_abempty . '',
    '' . $ipath_absolute . '',
    '' . $ipath_rootless . '',
    '' . $ipath_empty . ''
)));

$absolute_IRI = $scheme . ':' . $ihier_part . ncg('\\?' . $iquery, '?');

$IRI = $scheme . ':' . $ihier_part . ncg('\\?' . $iquery, '?') . ncg('\\#' . $ifragment, '?');

$IRI_reference = ncg($IRI . '|' . $irelative_ref);

Edit 7 March 2011: Because of the way PHP handles backslashes in quoted strings, these are unusable by default. You'll need to double-escape backslashes except where the backslash has a special meaning in regex. You can do that this way: 

$escape_backslash = '/(?<!\\)\\(?![\[\]\\\^\$\.\|\*\+\(\)QEnrtaefvdwsDWSbAZzB1-9GX]|x\{[0-9a-f]{1,4}\}|\c[A-Z]|)/';
$absolute_IRI = preg_replace($escape_backslash, '\\\\', $absolute_IRI);
$IRI = preg_replace($escape_backslash, '\\\\', $IRI);
$IRI_reference = preg_replace($escape_backslash, '\\\\', $IRI_reference);
If you think that's bad, you should see the one for e-mail: ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html
@Gumbo, it's allowed in the spec and used in URI implementations for HTTP applications. It's discouraged (for obvious reasons) but perfectly valid and should be anticipated. Most (if not all?) browsers sometimes translate HTTP authentication into the URL for subsequent access.
C
Community

I've just written up a blog post for a great solution for recognizing URLs in most used formats such as:

www.google.com

http://www.google.com

mailto:somebody@google.com

somebody@google.com

www.url-with-querystring.com/?url=has-querystring

The regular expression used is: 

/((([A-Za-z]{3,9}:(?:\/\/)?)(?:[-;:&=\+\$,\w]+@)?[A-Za-z0-9.-]+|(?:www.|[-;:&=\+\$,\w]+@)[A-Za-z0-9.-]+)((?:\/[\+~%\/.\w-_]*)?\??(?:[-\+=&;%@.\w_]*)#?(?:[\w]*))?)/
That one also works, but it's missing support for the port number (useful in debugging). Modified would be /((([A-Za-z]{3,9}:(?:\/\/)?)(?:[-;:&=\+\$,\w]+@)?[A-Za-z0-9.-]+(:[0-9]+)?|(?:www.|[-;:&=\+\$,\w]+@)[A-Za-z0-9.-]+)((?:\/[\+~%\/.\w-_]*)?\??(?:[-\+=&;%@.\w_]*)#?(?:[\w]*))?)/
Got another match mate: width:210px; and margin:3px
C
Community

What platform? If using .NET, use System.Uri.TryCreate, not a regex.

For example: 

static bool IsValidUrl(string urlString)
{
    Uri uri;
    return Uri.TryCreate(urlString, UriKind.Absolute, out uri)
        && (uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeHttp
         || uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeHttps
         || uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeFtp
         || uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeMailto
            /*...*/);
}

// In test fixture...

[Test]
void IsValidUrl_Test()
{
    Assert.True(IsValidUrl("http://www.example.com"));
    Assert.False(IsValidUrl("javascript:alert('xss')"));
    Assert.False(IsValidUrl(""));
    Assert.False(IsValidUrl(null));
}

(Thanks to @Yoshi for the tip about javascript:)

Uri.TryCreate() returns true if it's valid
A HUGE warning to anyone who uses this technique: System.Uri correctly accepts javascript: alert('blah'). You need to do further validation on Uri.Scheme to confirm the http/https/ftp protocol is being used, otherwise if such a URL is inserted into your ASP.NET pages' HTML as a link, your users are vulnerable to XSS attacks.
Notably, Uri.TryCreate returns true for empty strings as well. It appears that TryCreate isn't very effective...
what if I need a regex to do server/client-side in an ASP.NET MVC app? How would this help me on the client?
For .Net, use Uri.IsWellFormedUriString()
K
Keng

Here's what RegexBuddy uses. 

(\b(https?|ftp|file)://)?[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%?=~_|!:,.;]+[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#/%=~_|]

It matches these below (inside the ** ** marks): 

**http://www.regexbuddy.com**  
**http://www.regexbuddy.com/**  
**http://www.regexbuddy.com/index.html**  
**http://www.regexbuddy.com/index.html?source=library**

You can download RegexBuddy at http://www.regexbuddy.com/download.html.

Your regex doesn't match any url I can come up with - including those you've included. I paste your regex into rubular.com and it says "Forward slashes must be escaped." Is there a typo or can you clarify by getting it to work at rubular.com?
@PandaWood that's because you need to format for Ruby. What is Ruby's escape character?
Hi Keng, even if I copy your exact RegEx above into RegexBuddy, I can't match it on any URL. I guess there's something gone amiss in the markup. Ruby regex is hardly any different at this basic syntax level.
@PandaWood wait...if you have REB just go to the library and grab it. that's where i got it...check to see if they are the same.
As a JavaScript RegExp literal: /\b(https?|ftp|file):\/\/[\-A-Za-z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[\-A-Za-z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|]/
n
nhahtdh

Mathias Bynens has a great article on the best comparison of a lot of regular expressions: In search of the perfect URL validation regex

The best one posted is a little long, but it matches just about anything you can throw at it.

JavaScript version 

/^(?:(?:https?|ftp):\/\/)(?:\S+(?::\S*)?@)?(?:(?!(?:10|127)(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?!(?:169\.254|192\.168)(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?!172\.(?:1[6-9]|2\d|3[0-1])(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[01]\d|22[0-3])(?:\.(?:1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])){2}(?:\.(?:[1-9]\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,}))\.?)(?::\d{2,5})?(?:[/?#]\S*)?$/i

PHP version 

_^(?:(?:https?|ftp)://)(?:\S+(?::\S*)?@)?(?:(?!(?:10|127)(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?!(?:169\.254|192\.168)(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?!172\.(?:1[6-9]|2\d|3[0-1])(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[01]\d|22[0-3])(?:\.(?:1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])){2}(?:\.(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-4]))|(?:(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]-*)*[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)(?:\.(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]-*)*[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)*(?:\.(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]{2,}))\.?)(?::\d{2,5})?(?:[/?#]\S*)?$_iuS
For preg_match use with PHP use %^(?:(?:https?|ftp)://)(?:\S+(?::\S*)?@|\d{1,3}(?:\.\d{1,3}){3}|(?:(?:[a-z\d\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]+-?)*[a-z\d\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]+)(?:\.(?:[a-z\d\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]+-?)*[a-z\d\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]+)*(?:\.[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]{2,6}))(?::\d+)?(?:[^\s]*)?$%iu
On that page, I prefer stephenhay's solution, because it's 38 chars instead of 502!
Also doesn't allow for IP addresses
give valid (slash slash) : //www.2test.com/
I tested some JavaScript regular expression URL testers. The above Kril/nhahtdh tester came out the best, with no false negatives and only one false positive, namely foo.bar.. Interestingly, the Diego Perini original has the same error. Test results posted at pagenotes.com/url%20tester.htm
u
user229044

With regard to eyelidness' answer post that reads "This is based on my reading of the URI specification.": Thanks Eyelidness, yours is the perfect solution I sought, as it is based on the URI spec! Superb work. :)

I had to make two amendments. The first to get the regexp to match IP address URLs correctly in PHP (v5.2.10) with the preg_match() function.

I had to add one more set of parenthesis to the line above "IP Address" around the pipes: 

)|((\d|[1-9]\d|1\d{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\.){3}(?#

Not sure why.

I have also reduced the top level domain minimum length from 3 to 2 letters to support .co.uk and similar.

Final code: 

/^(https?|ftp):\/\/(?#                                      protocol
)(([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;\?&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})+(?#         username
)(:([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;\?&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})+)?(?#      password
)@)?(?#                                                     auth requires @
)((([a-z0-9]\.|[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]\.)*(?#             domain segments AND
)[a-z][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9](?#                                 top level domain  OR
)|((\d|[1-9]\d|1\d{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\.){3}(?#
    )(\d|[1-9]\d|1\d{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])(?#             IP address
))(:\d+)?(?#                                                port
))(((\/+([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)*(?# path
)(\?([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)(?#      query string
)?)?)?(?#                                                   path and query string optional
)(#([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)?(?#      fragment
)$/i

This modified version was not checked against the URI specification so I can't vouch for it's compliance, it was altered to handle URLs on local network environments and two digit TLDs as well as other kinds of Web URL, and to work better in the PHP setup I use.

As PHP code: 

define('URL_FORMAT', 
'/^(https?):\/\/'.                                         // protocol
'(([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;\?&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})+'.         // username
'(:([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;\?&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})+)?'.      // password
'@)?(?#'.                                                  // auth requires @
')((([a-z0-9]\.|[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]\.)*'.                      // domain segments AND
'[a-z][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]'.                                 // top level domain  OR
'|((\d|[1-9]\d|1\d{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\.){3}'.
'(\d|[1-9]\d|1\d{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])'.                 // IP address
')(:\d+)?'.                                                // port
')(((\/+([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)*'. // path
'(\?([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)'.      // query string
'?)?)?'.                                                   // path and query string optional
'(#([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)?'.      // fragment
'$/i');

Here is a test program in PHP which validates a variety of URLs using the regex: 

<?php

define('URL_FORMAT',
'/^(https?):\/\/'.                                         // protocol
'(([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;\?&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})+'.         // username
'(:([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;\?&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})+)?'.      // password
'@)?(?#'.                                                  // auth requires @
')((([a-z0-9]\.|[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]\.)*'.                      // domain segments AND
'[a-z][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]'.                                 // top level domain  OR
'|((\d|[1-9]\d|1\d{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\.){3}'.
'(\d|[1-9]\d|1\d{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])'.                 // IP address
')(:\d+)?'.                                                // port
')(((\/+([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)*'. // path
'(\?([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)'.      // query string
'?)?)?'.                                                   // path and query string optional
'(#([a-z0-9$_\.\+!\*\'\(\),;:@&=-]|%[0-9a-f]{2})*)?'.      // fragment
'$/i');

/**
 * Verify the syntax of the given URL. 
 * 
 * @access public
 * @param $url The URL to verify.
 * @return boolean
 */
function is_valid_url($url) {
  if (str_starts_with(strtolower($url), 'http://localhost')) {
    return true;
  }
  return preg_match(URL_FORMAT, $url);
}


/**
 * String starts with something
 * 
 * This function will return true only if input string starts with
 * niddle
 * 
 * @param string $string Input string
 * @param string $niddle Needle string
 * @return boolean
 */
function str_starts_with($string, $niddle) {
      return substr($string, 0, strlen($niddle)) == $niddle;
}


/**
 * Test a URL for validity and count results.
 * @param url url
 * @param expected expected result (true or false)
 */

$numtests = 0;
$passed = 0;

function test_url($url, $expected) {
  global $numtests, $passed;
  $numtests++;
  $valid = is_valid_url($url);
  echo "URL Valid?: " . ($valid?"yes":"no") . " for URL: $url. Expected: ".($expected?"yes":"no").". ";
  if($valid == $expected) {
    echo "PASS\n"; $passed++;
  } else {
    echo "FAIL\n";
  }
}

echo "URL Tests:\n\n";

test_url("http://localserver/projects/public/assets/javascript/widgets/UserBoxMenu/widget.css", true);
test_url("http://www.google.com", true);
test_url("http://www.google.co.uk/projects/my%20folder/test.php", true);
test_url("https://myserver.localdomain", true);
test_url("http://192.168.1.120/projects/index.php", true);
test_url("http://192.168.1.1/projects/index.php", true);
test_url("http://projectpier-server.localdomain/projects/public/assets/javascript/widgets/UserBoxMenu/widget.css", true);
test_url("https://2.4.168.19/project-pier?c=test&a=b", true);
test_url("https://localhost/a/b/c/test.php?c=controller&arg1=20&arg2=20", true);
test_url("http://user:password@localhost/a/b/c/test.php?c=controller&arg1=20&arg2=20", true);

echo "\n$passed out of $numtests tests passed.\n\n";

?>

Thanks again to eyelidness for the regex!

eyelidness' answer didn't work for me, but this one did. Thanks!
this one works in JavaScript, but I was not able to get the one eyelidness provided to work in JS, even after replacing \x with \u to escape unicode characters
Sho Kuwamoto's comment: "I ended up using the regex by user244966, which to me is the perfect blend of readable but thorough. However, there is one MAJOR issue in the regex.... His/her regex fails on domains that contain one character pieces, such as t.co The fix is to replace this line ')((([a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]\.)*'. with ')((([a-z0-9]\.|[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]\.)*'.." I've made the relevant edit based on this comment.
/^(https?|ftp): (protocol) Why do you disallow protocols like data, file, svn, dc++, magnet, skype or any other supported by a browser having the corresponding plugin or a server?
Be warned that this matches https://sdfasd, but not stackoverflow.com.
C
Christian Geier

The post Getting parts of a URL (Regex) discusses parsing a URL to identify its various components. If you want to check if a URL is well-formed, it should be sufficient for your needs.

If you need to check if it's actually valid, you'll eventually have to try to access whatever's on the other end.

In general, though, you'd probably be better off using a function that's supplied to you by your framework or another library. Many platforms include functions that parse URLs. For example, there's Python's urlparse module, and in .NET you could use the System.Uri class's constructor as a means of validating the URL.

A
Andy Lester

This might not be a job for regexes, but for existing tools in your language of choice. You probably want to use existing code that has already been written, tested, and debugged.

In PHP, use the parse_url function.

Perl: URI module.

Ruby: URI module.

.NET: 'Uri' class

Regexes are not a magic wand you wave at every problem that happens to involve strings.

Your last sentence very much reminds me of Law of the instrument/Maslow's hammer: "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Regexes are, however, beautiful for extracting URLs from a body of plaintext. If you suspect the entirety of a string is a URL, then I'd 100% agree with you and mention that Java's equivalent is java.net.URL.
The docs for parse_url in PHP state: This function is not meant to validate the given URL, it only breaks it up into the above listed parts.
A
AwokeKnowing

This will match all URLs

with or without http/https

with or without www

...including sub-domains and those new top-level domain name extensions such as .museum, .academy, .foundation etc. which can have up to 63 characters (not just .com, .net, .info etc.) 

(([\w]+:)?//)?(([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+(:([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+)?@)?([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+[\w]{2,63}(:[\d]+)?(/([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)*(\?(&?([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)?

Because today maximum length of the available top-level domain name extension is 13 characters such as .international, you can change the number 63 in expression to 13 to prevent someone misusing it.

as javascript

var urlreg=/(([\w]+:)?\/\/)?(([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+(:([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+)?@)?([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+[\w]{2,63}(:[\d]+)?(\/([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)*(\?(&?([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)?/; $('textarea').on('input',function(){ var url = $(this).val(); $(this).toggleClass('invalid', urlreg.test(url) == false) }); $('textarea').trigger('input'); textarea{color:green;} .invalid{color:red;}

Wikipedia Article: List of all internet top-level domains

Could anyone please convert this for use in Javascript?
Finally!! Can someone mark this as an answer? Or at lease upvote it. I thing though, i don't think it matches single letter domains, i.e. t.co. How would you adjust it to handle these case?
it seems to allow http// without :
matches telephone numbers and email addresses have a look at regexr.com/3eosr copy pasted your regex, just escaped all slashes
Be aware that this matches http/stackoverflow.com/, h77ps://stackoverflow.com/, and //stackoverflow.com/.
C
Community

Non-validating URI-reference Parser

For reference purposes, here's the IETF Spec: (TXT | HTML). In particular, Appendix B. Parsing a URI Reference with a Regular Expression demonstrates how to parse a valid regex. This is described as,

for an example of a non-validating URI-reference parser that will take any given string and extract the URI components.

Here's the regex they provide: 

 ^(([^:/?#]+):)?(//([^/?#]*))?([^?#]*)(\?([^#]*))?(#(.*))?

As someone else said, it's probably best to leave this to a lib/framework you're already using.

Completely useless. Can someone show me a string which this regex does not match? (Both "#?#?#" or "<<<>>>" match. What kind of URIs are those?)
@AlexD Don't complain to me. That's the official specification for a URI. Take it up with the IETF if you don't like it.
@AlexD I think those might be considered relative references. See RFC 3986, section 4.2.
@andyg0808, you may be right, but the fact remains that this regex matches virtually any string under the sun.
This is not a good answer because it's not validating, as per the question. It's parsing. Those are two different functions. If you give this regex trash, it tries to parse it. If the URL isn't valid, the parsing isn't guaranteed to work.
N
Nodarii 
^(http:\/\/www\.|https:\/\/www\.|http:\/\/|https:\/\/)?[a-z0-9]+([\-\.]{1}[a-z0-9]+)*\.[a-z]{2,5}(:[0-9]{1,5})?(\/.*)?$

live demo: https://regex101.com/r/HUNasA/2

I have tested various expressions to match my requirements.

As a user I can hit browser search bar with following strings:

valid urls

https://www.google.com

http://www.google.com

http://google.com/

https://google.com/

www.google.com

google.com

https://www.google.com.ua

http://www.google.com.ua

http://google.com.ua

https://google.com.ua/

www.google.com.ua

google.com.ua

https://mail.google.com

http://mail.google.com

mail.google.com

invalid urls

http://google

https://google.c

google

google.

.google

.google.com

goole.c

...

Test this URL: Google.com URL should be case insensitive
In the end of the URL put space and then symbols/letters again it will be considered it will be calculated as part of URL
Shortened and corrected /^(http(s)?:\/\/)?(www.)?([a-zA-Z0-9])+([\-\.]{1}[a-zA-Z0-9]+)*\.[a-zA-Z]{2,5}(:[0-9]{1,5})?(\/[^\s]*)?$/gm regex101.com/r/KR2b6n/1
The corrected version by @AniNaslyan works well for me if I replace the ^ and ? bookends with \b
What about localhost?
n
ndm13

The best regular expression for URL for me would be: 

"(([\w]+:)?//)?(([\d\w]|%[a-fA-F\d]{2,2})+(:([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+)?@)?([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+[\w]{2,4}(:[\d]+)?(/([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)*(\?(&?([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)?"
this seems to be limited w/r/t number of domains it'll accept?
Thanks! Here's the escaped version that worked for me on iOS: (([\\w]+:)?//)?(([\\d\\w]|%[a-fA-f\\d]{2,2})+(:([\\d\\w]|%[a-fA-f\\d]{2,2})+)?@)?([\\d\\w][-\\d\\w]{0,253}[\\d\\w]\\.)+[\\w]{2,4}(:[\\d]+)?(/([-+_~.\\d\\w]|%[a-fA-f\\d]{2,2})*)*(\\?(&?([-+_~.\\d\\w]|%[a-fA-f\\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#([-+_~.\\d\\w]|%[a-fA-f\\d]{2,2})*)?
This regex only matches suffixes up to 4 characters long and fails on IP addresses (v4 and v6), localhost, and domain names with foreign characters. I would recommend editing your inclusion size ranges and replacing \w with \p{L} at a minimum.
Note that this RegEx doesn't capture URLs that have subdomains of one letter only, like "m.sitename.com". In order to fix that, I had to change ([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+ into ([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]?\.)+ (add a question mark near the end of it)
doesnt work with something.co.uk
D
Dmytro Huz

Here is a good rule that covers all possible cases: ports, params and etc 

/(https?:\/\/(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]{0,61}[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,61}[a-z0-9])(:?\d*)\/?([a-z_\/0-9\-#.]*)\??([a-z_\/0-9\-#=&]*)/g
please check : www.ankit.com
L
LifeInstructor 
        function validateURL(textval) {
            var urlregex = new RegExp(
            "^(http|https|ftp)\://([a-zA-Z0-9\.\-]+(\:[a-zA-Z0-9\.&amp;%\$\-]+)*@)*((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]{1}[0-9]{2}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1}|[1-9])\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]{1}[0-9]{2}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1}|[1-9]|0)\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]{1}[0-9]{2}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1}|[1-9]|0)\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]{1}[0-9]{2}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1}|[0-9])|localhost|([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)*[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.(com|edu|gov|int|mil|net|org|biz|arpa|info|name|pro|aero|coop|museum|[a-zA-Z]{2}))(\:[0-9]+)*(/($|[a-zA-Z0-9\.\,\?\'\\\+&amp;%\$#\=~_\-]+))*$");
            return urlregex.test(textval);
        }

Matches http://site.com/dir/file.php?var=moo | ftp://user:pass@site.com:21/file/dir

Non-Matches site.com | http://site.com/dir//

Note that this regex will match if we have [empty space] in the url. Example: http://www.goo gle.com will match.
use parse_url() before calling this function
Dont forget to escape the "/"'s and "?", its good practice and should make it cross compatible (from what i know (which isn't much on this matter :) ))
t
thermz

I was not able to find the regex I was looking for so I modified a regex to fullfill my requirements, and apparently it seems to work fine now. My requirements were:

Match URLs w/o protocol (www.gooogle.com)

Match URLs with query parameters and path (http://subdomain.web-site.com/cgi-bin/perl.cgi?key1=value1&key2=value2e)

Don't match URLs where there are not acceptable characters (e.g. "'£), for instance: (www.google.com/somthing"/somethingmore)

Here what I came up with, any suggestion is appreciated: 

@Test
    public void testWebsiteUrl(){
        String regularExpression = "((http|ftp|https):\\/\\/)?[\\w\\-_]+(\\.[\\w\\-_]+)+([\\w\\-\\.,@?^=%&amp;:/~\\+#]*[\\w\\-\\@?^=%&amp;/~\\+#])?";

        assertTrue("www.google.com".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("www.google.co.uk".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("http://www.google.com".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("http://www.google.co.uk".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("https://www.google.com".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("https://www.google.co.uk".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("google.com".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("google.co.uk".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("google.mu".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("mes.intnet.mu".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("cse.uom.ac.mu".matches(regularExpression));

        assertTrue("http://www.google.com/path".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("http://subdomain.web-site.com/cgi-bin/perl.cgi?key1=value1&key2=value2e".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("http://www.google.com/?queryparam=123".matches(regularExpression));
        assertTrue("http://www.google.com/path?queryparam=123".matches(regularExpression));

        assertFalse("www..dr.google".matches(regularExpression));

        assertFalse("www:google.com".matches(regularExpression));

        assertFalse("https://www@.google.com".matches(regularExpression));

        assertFalse("https://www.google.com\"".matches(regularExpression));
        assertFalse("https://www.google.com'".matches(regularExpression));

        assertFalse("http://www.google.com/path'".matches(regularExpression));
        assertFalse("http://subdomain.web-site.com/cgi-bin/perl.cgi?key1=value1&key2=value2e'".matches(regularExpression));
        assertFalse("http://www.google.com/?queryparam=123'".matches(regularExpression));
        assertFalse("http://www.google.com/path?queryparam=12'3".matches(regularExpression));

    }
This matches http/stackoverflow.com/, h77ps://stackoverflow.com/, and //stackoverflow.com/.
http/stackoverflow.com/ is a valid relative url, //stackoverflow.com/ is a valid url without a specific protocol, the h77ps case is problematic
Thanks for the feedbacks. I believe the intention here is to not include relative path either so you are both right, it is a valid relative URL but our regex should not match those. We need to improve the regex :)
D
Dane Brouwer

I wrote a little groovy version that you can run

it matches the following URLs (which is good enough for me) 

public static void main(args) {
    String url = "go to http://www.m.abut.ly/abc its awesome"
    url = url.replaceAll(/https?:\/\/w{0,3}\w*?\.(\w*?\.)?\w{2,3}\S*|www\.(\w*?\.)?\w*?\.\w{2,3}\S*|(\w*?\.)?\w*?\.\w{2,3}[\/\?]\S*/ , { it ->
        "woof${it}woof"
    })
    println url 
}

http://google.com
http://google.com/help.php
http://google.com/help.php?a=5

http://www.google.com
http://www.google.com/help.php
http://www.google.com?a=5

google.com?a=5
google.com/help.php
google.com/help.php?a=5

http://www.m.google.com/help.php?a=5 (and all its permutations)
www.m.google.com/help.php?a=5 (and all its permutations)
m.google.com/help.php?a=5 (and all its permutations)

The important thing for any URLs that don't start with http or www is that they must include a / or ?

I bet this can be tweaked a little more but it does the job pretty nice for being so short and compact... because you can pretty much split it in 3:

find anything that starts with http: 

https?:\/\/w{0,3}\w*?\.\w{2,3}\S*

find anything that starts with www: 

www\.\w*?\.\w{2,3}\S*

or find anything that must have a text then a dot then at least 2 letters and then a ? or /: 

\w*?\.\w{2,3}[\/\?]\S*
L
LifeInstructor 
function validateURL(textval) {
            var urlregex = new RegExp(
            "^(http|https|ftp)\://[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(:[a-zA-Z0-9]*)?/?([a-zA-Z0-9\-\._\?\,\'/\\\+&amp;%\$#\=~])*$");
            return urlregex.test(textval);
        }

Matches http://www.asdah.com/~joe | ftp://ftp.asdah.co.uk:2828/asdah%20asdah.gif | https://asdah.gov/asdh-ah.as

t
the Tin Man

If you really search for the ultimate match, you probably find it on "A Good Url Regular Expression?".

But a regex that really matches all possible domains and allows anything that is allowed according to RFCs is horribly long and unreadable, trust me ;-)

r
ridgerunner

I've been working on an in-depth article discussing URI validation using regular expressions. It is based on RFC3986.

Regular Expression URI Validation

Although the article is not yet complete, I have come up with a PHP function which does a pretty good job of validating HTTP and FTP URLs. Here is the current version: 

// function url_valid($url) { Rev:20110423_2000
//
// Return associative array of valid URI components, or FALSE if $url is not
// RFC-3986 compliant. If the passed URL begins with: "www." or "ftp.", then
// "http://" or "ftp://" is prepended and the corrected full-url is stored in
// the return array with a key name "url". This value should be used by the caller.
//
// Return value: FALSE if $url is not valid, otherwise array of URI components:
// e.g.
// Given: "http://www.jmrware.com:80/articles?height=10&width=75#fragone"
// Array(
//    [scheme] => http
//    [authority] => www.jmrware.com:80
//    [userinfo] =>
//    [host] => www.jmrware.com
//    [IP_literal] =>
//    [IPV6address] =>
//    [ls32] =>
//    [IPvFuture] =>
//    [IPv4address] =>
//    [regname] => www.jmrware.com
//    [port] => 80
//    [path_abempty] => /articles
//    [query] => height=10&width=75
//    [fragment] => fragone
//    [url] => http://www.jmrware.com:80/articles?height=10&width=75#fragone
// )
function url_valid($url) {
    if (strpos($url, 'www.') === 0) $url = 'http://'. $url;
    if (strpos($url, 'ftp.') === 0) $url = 'ftp://'. $url;
    if (!preg_match('/# Valid absolute URI having a non-empty, valid DNS host.
        ^
        (?P<scheme>[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9+\-.]*):\/\/
        (?P<authority>
          (?:(?P<userinfo>(?:[A-Za-z0-9\-._~!$&\'()*+,;=:]|%[0-9A-Fa-f]{2})*)@)?
          (?P<host>
            (?P<IP_literal>
              \[
              (?:
                (?P<IPV6address>
                  (?:                                                (?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){6}
                  |                                                ::(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){5}
                  | (?:                          [0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){4}
                  | (?:(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){0,1}[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){3}
                  | (?:(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){0,2}[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4})?::(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){2}
                  | (?:(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){0,3}[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4})?::   [0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:
                  | (?:(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){0,4}[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4})?::
                  )
                  (?P<ls32>[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}
                  | (?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}
                       (?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)
                  )
                |   (?:(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){0,5}[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4})?::   [0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}
                |   (?:(?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4}:){0,6}[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,4})?::
                )
              | (?P<IPvFuture>[Vv][0-9A-Fa-f]+\.[A-Za-z0-9\-._~!$&\'()*+,;=:]+)
              )
              \]
            )
          | (?P<IPv4address>(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}
                               (?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?))
          | (?P<regname>(?:[A-Za-z0-9\-._~!$&\'()*+,;=]|%[0-9A-Fa-f]{2})+)
          )
          (?::(?P<port>[0-9]*))?
        )
        (?P<path_abempty>(?:\/(?:[A-Za-z0-9\-._~!$&\'()*+,;=:@]|%[0-9A-Fa-f]{2})*)*)
        (?:\?(?P<query>       (?:[A-Za-z0-9\-._~!$&\'()*+,;=:@\\/?]|%[0-9A-Fa-f]{2})*))?
        (?:\#(?P<fragment>    (?:[A-Za-z0-9\-._~!$&\'()*+,;=:@\\/?]|%[0-9A-Fa-f]{2})*))?
        $
        /mx', $url, $m)) return FALSE;
    switch ($m['scheme']) {
    case 'https':
    case 'http':
        if ($m['userinfo']) return FALSE; // HTTP scheme does not allow userinfo.
        break;
    case 'ftps':
    case 'ftp':
        break;
    default:
        return FALSE;   // Unrecognized URI scheme. Default to FALSE.
    }
    // Validate host name conforms to DNS "dot-separated-parts".
    if ($m['regname']) { // If host regname specified, check for DNS conformance.
        if (!preg_match('/# HTTP DNS host name.
            ^                      # Anchor to beginning of string.
            (?!.{256})             # Overall host length is less than 256 chars.
            (?:                    # Group dot separated host part alternatives.
              [A-Za-z0-9]\.        # Either a single alphanum followed by dot
            |                      # or... part has more than one char (63 chars max).
              [A-Za-z0-9]          # Part first char is alphanum (no dash).
              [A-Za-z0-9\-]{0,61}  # Internal chars are alphanum plus dash.
              [A-Za-z0-9]          # Part last char is alphanum (no dash).
              \.                   # Each part followed by literal dot.
            )*                     # Zero or more parts before top level domain.
            (?:                    # Explicitly specify top level domains.
              com|edu|gov|int|mil|net|org|biz|
              info|name|pro|aero|coop|museum|
              asia|cat|jobs|mobi|tel|travel|
              [A-Za-z]{2})         # Country codes are exactly two alpha chars.
              \.?                  # Top level domain can end in a dot.
            $                      # Anchor to end of string.
            /ix', $m['host'])) return FALSE;
    }
    $m['url'] = $url;
    for ($i = 0; isset($m[$i]); ++$i) unset($m[$i]);
    return $m; // return TRUE == array of useful named $matches plus the valid $url.
}

This function utilizes two regexes; one to match a subset of valid generic URIs (absolute ones having a non-empty host), and a second to validate the DNS "dot-separated-parts" host name. Although this function currently validates only HTTP and FTP schemes, it is structured such that it can be easily extended to handle other schemes.

I'm curious why you chose to follow URI RFC3986 rather than IRI RFC3987.
@eyelidlessness - Good question. I'm not really well versed with IRIs. Thanks for pointing out that RFC. I see that according to RFC3987: "...in the HTTP protocol [RFC2616], the Request URI is defined as a URI, which means that direct use of IRIs is not allowed in HTTP requests." So an IRI is actually encoded as a URI before being sent via HTTP. So for the time being, there will always be a need for URI validation. Maybe I'll tackle IRI validation at a later date. Thanks for the comment!
@ridgerunner, the reference to 2616 is outdated. IRIs are sent as IRIs, with all of the characters that IRIs allow and URIs don't. I appreciate the effort to create a "human readable" pattern (and I've worked on one myself but haven't had the opportunity to test sufficiently) but in 2012 and going into 2013 it's unacceptable to limit addresses to western characters while non-western characters are in fact in wide use in paths, fragments and even domains.
M
Mikael Engver

I use this regex: 

((https?:)?//)?(([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+(:([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+)?@)?([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+[\w]{2,63}(:[\d]+)?(/([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)*(\?(&?([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)?

To support both: 

http://stackoverflow.com
https://stackoverflow.com

And: 

//stackoverflow.com
I had to update your regex. The third '?' was allowing all sorts of text to be selected. After removing it only 'http', 'https', or '//' were selected. I modified this so it works on relative URLs to '/'. And escaped the forward slashes. ((https?:)?(\/?\/))(([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+(:([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+)?@)?([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+[\w]{2,63}(:[\d]+)?(/([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)*(\?(&?([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)?
Updated the capturing groups so they can be more useful: ((?:https?:)?(?:\/?\/))((?:[\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+(?::(?:[\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+)?@)?((?:[\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+[\w]{2,63})(:[\d]+)?(\/(?:[-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)*(\?(?:&?(?:[-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#(?:[-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)?
k
kash

Here's a ready-to-go Java version from the Android source code. This is the best one I've found. 

public static final Matcher WEB  = Pattern.compile(new StringBuilder()                 
.append("((?:(http|https|Http|Https|rtsp|Rtsp):")                      
.append("\\/\\/(?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9\\$\\-\\_\\.\\+\\!\\*\\'\\(\\)")                         
.append("\\,\\;\\?\\&\\=]|(?:\\%[a-fA-F0-9]{2})){1,64}(?:\\:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9\\$\\-\\_")                         
.append("\\.\\+\\!\\*\\'\\(\\)\\,\\;\\?\\&\\=]|(?:\\%[a-fA-F0-9]{2})){1,25})?\\@)?)?")                         
.append("((?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9\\-]{0,64}\\.)+")   // named host                            
.append("(?:")   // plus top level domain                         
.append("(?:aero|arpa|asia|a[cdefgilmnoqrstuwxz])")                         
.append("|(?:biz|b[abdefghijmnorstvwyz])")                         
.append("|(?:cat|com|coop|c[acdfghiklmnoruvxyz])")                         
.append("|d[ejkmoz]")                         
.append("|(?:edu|e[cegrstu])")                         
.append("|f[ijkmor]")                         
.append("|(?:gov|g[abdefghilmnpqrstuwy])")                         
.append("|h[kmnrtu]")                         
.append("|(?:info|int|i[delmnoqrst])")                         
.append("|(?:jobs|j[emop])")                         
.append("|k[eghimnrwyz]")                         
.append("|l[abcikrstuvy]")                         
.append("|(?:mil|mobi|museum|m[acdghklmnopqrstuvwxyz])")                         
.append("|(?:name|net|n[acefgilopruz])")                         
.append("|(?:org|om)")                         
.append("|(?:pro|p[aefghklmnrstwy])")                         
.append("|qa")                         
.append("|r[eouw]")                         
.append("|s[abcdeghijklmnortuvyz]")                         
.append("|(?:tel|travel|t[cdfghjklmnoprtvwz])")                         
.append("|u[agkmsyz]")                         
.append("|v[aceginu]")                         
.append("|w[fs]")                         
.append("|y[etu]")                         
.append("|z[amw]))")                         
.append("|(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4]") // or ip address                                                 
.append("[0-9]|[0-1][0-9]{2}|[1-9][0-9]|[1-9])\\.(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]")                             
.append("|[0-1][0-9]{2}|[1-9][0-9]|[1-9]|0)\\.(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1]")                         
.append("[0-9]{2}|[1-9][0-9]|[1-9]|0)\\.(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[0-1][0-9]{2}")                         
.append("|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9])))")                         
.append("(?:\\:\\d{1,5})?)") // plus option port number                             
.append("(\\/(?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9\\;\\/\\?\\:\\@\\&\\=\\#\\~")  // plus option query params                         
.append("\\-\\.\\+\\!\\*\\'\\(\\)\\,\\_])|(?:\\%[a-fA-F0-9]{2}))*)?")                         
.append("(?:\\b|$)").toString()                 
).matcher("");
This don't work with "New gTLDs", check en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains & newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-strings. Hardcoding list of TLD is bad practice... Some public suffix lists are available, they include recent variant of TLD: publicsuffix.org (used in Firefox, Chrome, IE)
My first thought at seeing this: there's no kill like overkill. They literally took all ccTLDs and built a regex to match them specifically. Cuts down on false positives, I suppose, but a terrible way to handle the situation.
R
Ravi Matani

I hope it's helpful for you... 

^(http|https):\/\/+[\www\d]+\.[\w]+(\/[\w\d]+)?
E
Ewan

For Python, this is the actual URL validating regex used in Django 1.5.1: 

import re
regex = re.compile(
        r'^(?:http|ftp)s?://'  # http:// or https://
        r'(?:(?:[A-Z0-9](?:[A-Z0-9-]{0,61}[A-Z0-9])?\.)+(?:[A-Z]{2,6}\.?|[A-Z0-9-]{2,}\.?)|'  # domain...
        r'localhost|'  # localhost...
        r'\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}|'  # ...or ipv4
        r'\[?[A-F0-9]*:[A-F0-9:]+\]?)'  # ...or ipv6
        r'(?::\d+)?'  # optional port
        r'(?:/?|[/?]\S+)$', re.IGNORECASE)

This does both ipv4 and ipv6 addresses as well as ports and GET parameters.

Found in the code here, Line 44.

s
samayo

This one works for me very well. (https?|ftp)://(www\d?|[a-zA-Z0-9]+)?\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(\:|\.)([a-zA-Z0-9.]+|(\d+)?)([/?:].*)?

E
Elie G.

Here is a regex I made which extracts the different parts from an URL:

^((?:https?|ftp):\/\/?)?([^:/\s.]+\.[^:/\s]|localhost)(:\d+)?((?:\/\w+)*\/)?([\w\-.]+[^#?\s]+)?([^#]+)?(#[\w-]+)?$

((?:https?|ftp):\/\/?)?(group 1): extracts the protocol
([^:/\s.]+\.[^:/\s]|localhost)(group 2): extracts the hostname
(:\d+)?(group 3): extracts the port number
((?:\/\w+)*\/)?([\w\-.]+[^#?\s]+)?(groups 4 & 5): extracts the path part
([^#]+)?(group 6): extracts the query part
(#[\w-]+)?(group 7): extracts the hash part

For every part of the regex listed above, you can remove the ending ? to force it (or add one to make it facultative). You can also remove the ^ at the beginning and $ at the end of the regex so it won't need to match the whole string.

See it on regex101.

Note: this regex is not 100% safe and may accept some strings which are not necessarily valid URLs but it does indeed validate some criterias. Its main goal was to extract the different parts of an URL not to validate it.

Thanks. The group approach to these answers is best. Here's hoping for updates following the direction of this article linked on the next page, and a revision of the "not 100% safe". A quantification like 99.9% is enough for most readers. :P
m
miphe

For convenience here's a one-liner regexp for URL's that will also match localhost where you're more likely to have ports than .com or similar. 

(http(s)?:\/\/.)?(www\.)?[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%._\+~#=]{2,256}(\.[a-z]{2,6}|:[0-9]{3,4})\b([-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&\/\/=]*)
R
Rahul Desai

I found the following Regex for URLs, tested successfully with 500+ URLs:

/\b(?:(?:https?|ftp):\/\/)(?:\S+(?::\S*)?@)?(?:(?!10(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?!127(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?!169\.254(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?!192\.168(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?!172\.(?:1[6-9]|2\d|3[0-1])(?:\.\d{1,3}){2})(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[01]\d|22[0-3])(?:\.(?:1?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])){2}(?:\.(?:[1-9]\d?|1\d\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-4]))|(?:(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+-?)*[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)(?:\.(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+-?)*[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)*(?:\.(?:[a-z\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]{2,})))(?::\d{2,5})?(?:\/[^\s]*)?\b/gi

I know it looks ugly, but the good thing is that it works. :)

Explanation and demo with 581 random URLs on regex101.

Source: In search of the perfect URL validation regex

Your regex is doing the work in 155'000 steps. Here is another regex that is evaluating all the 580 URLS your provided in 19'000 steps regex101 link: /(https?):\/\/([\w-]+(\.[\\w-]+)*\.([a-z]+))(([\w.,@?^=%&amp;:\/~+#()!-]*)([\w@?^=%&amp;\/~+#()!-]))?/gi
Though much shorter than @eyelidlessness 's answer, I believe his excludes the "noncharacters" from FDD0-FDEF and those ending in FFFE or FFFF and the "reserved" characters from D800-DFFF and yours does not.
m
maxspan

To Match a URL there are various option and it depend on you requirement. below are few. 

_(^|[\s.:;?\-\]<\(])(https?://[-\w;/?:@&=+$\|\_.!~*\|'()\[\]%#,☺]+[\w/#](\(\))?)(?=$|[\s',\|\(\).:;?\-\[\]>\)])_i

#\b(([\w-]+://?|www[.])[^\s()<>]+(?:\([\w\d]+\)|([^[:punct:]\s]|/)))#iS

And there is a link which gives you more than 10 different variations of validation for URL.

https://mathiasbynens.be/demo/url-regex

A
Ashish

I tried to formulate my version of url. My requirement was to capture instances in a String where possible url can be cse.uom.ac.mu - noting that it is not preceded by http nor www 

String regularExpression = "((((ht{2}ps?://)?)((w{3}\\.)?))?)[^.&&[a-zA-Z0-9]][a-zA-Z0-9.-]+[^.&&[a-zA-Z0-9]](\\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3})";

assertTrue("www.google.com".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("www.google.co.uk".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("http://www.google.com".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("http://www.google.co.uk".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("https://www.google.com".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("https://www.google.co.uk".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("google.com".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("google.co.uk".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("google.mu".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("mes.intnet.mu".matches(regularExpression));
assertTrue("cse.uom.ac.mu".matches(regularExpression));

//cannot contain 2 '.' after www
assertFalse("www..dr.google".matches(regularExpression));

//cannot contain 2 '.' just before com
assertFalse("www.dr.google..com".matches(regularExpression));

// to test case where url www must be followed with a '.'
assertFalse("www:google.com".matches(regularExpression));

// to test case where url www must be followed with a '.'
//assertFalse("http://wwwe.google.com".matches(regularExpression));

// to test case where www must be preceded with a '.'
assertFalse("https://www@.google.com".matches(regularExpression));
you really use ht{2}ps? rather then https?
It should give the same result, but yeah you are right. But I was on an experimental phase of regular expression and wanted to try all its syntax. Thanks for pointing this out.
j
jojojohn

whats wrong with plain and simple FILTER_VALIDATE_URL ? 

 $url = "http://www.example.com";

if(!filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL))
  {
  echo "URL is not valid";
  }
else
  {
  echo "URL is valid";
  }

I know its not the question exactly but it did the job for me when I needed to validate urls so thought it might be useful to others who come across this post looking for the same thing

This question is looking for a regexp but you suggest using some filter constant. Do you know how does it searches for links internally?
The question is: "What is the best regular expression to check if a string is a valid URL?" sometimes the problem is not to check a String that is supposed to be an URL, sometimes you have a text and you need to read all the URLs in that text, and using REGEX is the only way. Furthermore the OP asks for a solution without specifing a particular language, your solution can be applied only in a specific platform.

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