How to check a URL with a lot of requests

Question

I have an automatic site, and I have a SAVE SEARCH function that saves the search that the user has done on the site for future use. What I do is that I store the entire URL in the database.

But I need to check it as a valid URL. It looks like this.

http://www.anywebsite.com/cars.php?postcode=CV2+5AS&distance=&make=&min_price=&max_price=&category_type=&body_type=&fuel=&colour=&transmission=&year_of_registration=&mileage=&engine=&doors=&seller=&keywords=&sort=PRICE_LOWEST&referer_url=http%253A%252F%252Flocalhost%252Fselling%252Fcars.php&trader_id=0&case=ADVANCE 

Can anyone provide me with any idea on how I can achieve this?

I have a preg_match that is here.

 if (!preg_match('/^https?:(\/\/)?(www\.)?([a-zA-Z0-9_%]*)\b\.[az]{2,4}(\.[az]{2})?/', $fields[$field_name])) 

But it only checks URLs like http://www.anywebsite.com , while I need to check all the above URLs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

There should be no reason why you would need to manually copy the URL check, this problem has been resolved.

Take a look at php filter_var() .

Example URL validation: http://www.w3schools.com/php/filter_validate_url.asp

 $url = "http://www.anywebsite.com/cars.php?postcode=CV2+5AS&distance=&make=&min_price=&max_price=&category_type=&body_type=&fuel=&colour=&transmission=&year_of_registration=&mileage=&engine=&doors=&seller=&keywords=&sort=PRICE_LOWEST&referer_url=http%253A%252F%252Flocalhost%252Fselling%252Fcars.php&trader_id=0&case=ADVANCE"; if (!filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL)) { echo "URL is not valid"; } else { echo "URL is valid"; } 

Answer 2

You should use filter_vars() with FILTER_VALIDATE_URL as suggested in other answers. However, if you want to use RegEx, you should see Looking for the perfect regular URL validation @Mathias Bynens URL

I will add only one RegEx from @diegoperini, which supports all URL patterns.

^(?:(?: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]))|(?:(?:[az\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+-?)*[az\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)(?:\.(?:[az\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+-?)*[az\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}0-9]+)*(?:\.(?:[az\x{00a1}-\x{ffff}]{2,})))(?::\d{2,5})?(?:\/[^\s]*)?$

Answer 3

why reinvent the wheel when you can do filter_var() ? then use the FILTER_VALIDATE_URL filter_var filter for PHP 5> = 5.2.0. You can also add FILTER_FLAG_HOST_REQUIRED to have the required domain name, which you think you need, and you can check other flags to see if they are needed.

Example:

 $url = 'http://www.anywebsite.com/cars.php?postcode=CV2+5AS&distance=&make=&min_price=&max_price=&category_type=&body_type=&fuel=&colour=&transmission=&year_of_registration=&mileage=&engine=&doors=&seller=&keywords=&sort=PRICE_LOWEST&referer_url=http%253A%252F%252Flocalhost%252Fselling%252Fcars.php&trader_id=0&case=ADVANCE'; if(filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL)){ #do stuff here }else{ #invalid } 

Working example: http://ideone.com/N84VGF

If you have an older version of PHP installed, you can use parse_url() , but you need to add a regular expression / validation, because it doesn't check if it is a valid / valid URL.