Still can't get to grips with reg expressions

[ben_m_gunn]

Hi All

I am trying to validate a URL. I want to be able to validate the following URLS:

http://xxx.xxx/
http://xxx.xxx.xxx/
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/

I have been trying to write a reg exp that reads like this:

http://xxx. AND (xxx OR xxx.xxx OR xxx.xxx.xx) AND /

Here is what if have been trying:

var urlReg = "^http:\\/\\/([a-zA-Z0-9])+\\.{1}([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)|([a-zA-Z0-9]+\\.{1}[a-zA-Z0-9]+)|([a-zA-Z0-9]+\\.{1}[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\.{1}[a-zA-Z0-9]{2})?\\/$";

Any suggestions on why this wont work?

Regards, Ben

[Flawless_koder]

You can validate all you want....

At the end of the day - that's no assurance the url is valid ( if you understand me ) ie: www.fishingforgoatsinthepacific.com

( I REALLY hope that url doesn't work )

Better still - why not actually validate it server side ?

You could use a single script entry to call a file - use LWP::Simple or something - check the response - and return a binary response variable.

That'd work better - wouldn't it ?

Flawless

[jkd]

This is something I was working on a while ago, but doesn't quite work yet, but it may be something to start with:

((?:\w[\w-]*\.)*\w(?:[\w-]{0,66}(?=\.(?:com)|(?:net)|(?:org)$))|(?:[\w-]{2,66}(?=\.info$))|(?:[\w-]{2,21}(?=\.biz$))|(?:[\w-]{0,21}(?!\.(?:com)|(?:net)|(?:org)|(?:biz)|(?:info)$)(?=\.[a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?$)))

The goal of that to is match valid domain names, and the individual components of it work fine, but when jumbled together with |, they don't, something I intend to fix...

[been]

#([a-z]+?://){1}([a-z0-9\-\.,\?!%\*_\#:;~\\&$@\/=\+]+)#si

This is a fairly good pcre to match an url (got it from phpBB), maybe you could change that to

#http://([a-z0-9\-\.,\?!%\*_\#:;~\\&$@\/=\+]+)#si

But, like Flawless_koder said, that doesn't guarantee that the domain/page the url points to really exists.

[matiefert]

If you are willing (and allowed by your ISP) to use Rebol, the only expression you need is:

url? variableName

And that's it - no regex messes at all.

More info: http://www.rebol.com/

enjoy! :-)

Marj