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I need a PHP validation function for URL with Query string (parameters seperated with &). currently I've the following function for validating URLs

$pattern = '/^(([\w]+:)?\/\/)?(([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+(:([\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})+)?@)?([\d\w][-\d\w]{0,253}[\d\w]\.)+[\w]{2,4}(:[\d]+)?(\/([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)*(\?(&?([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})=?)*)?(#([-+_~.\d\w]|%[a-fA-f\d]{2,2})*)?$/';

echo preg_match($pattern, $url);

This function correctly validates input like

google.com www.google.com http://google.com http://www.google.com ...etc

But this won't validate the URL when it comes with parameters (Query string). for eg.

http://google.com/index.html?prod=gmail&act=inbox

I need a function that accepts both types of URL inputs. Please help. Thanks in advance.

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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

A simple filter_var 

if(filter_var($yoururl, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL))
{
  echo 'Ok';
}

might do the trick, although there are problems with url not preceding the schema: http://codepad.org/1HAdufMG

You can turn around the issue by placing an http:// in front of urls without it.
As suggested by @DaveRandom, you could do something like:

$parsed = parse_url($url); 
if (!isset($parsed['scheme'])) $url = "http://$url";

before feeding the filter_var() function.

Overall it's still a simpler solution than some extra-complicated regex, though..

It also has these flags available:

FILTER_FLAG_PATH_REQUIRED FILTER_VALIDATE_URL Requires the URL to contain a path part. FILTER_FLAG_QUERY_REQUIRED FILTER_VALIDATE_URL Requires the URL to contain a query string.

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1  
FTR, I think the most sensible approach to making sure the scheme is present would be $parsed = parse_url($str); if (!isset($parsed['scheme'])) $url = "http://$url"; – DaveRandom Dec 14 '11 at 13:48
Thankyou, updated with your comment – Damien Pirsy Dec 14 '11 at 13:53
I Used Parse_url for checking whether query exists in URI. Almost Worked..:) – Jenson M John Dec 14 '11 at 14:38
up vote 0 down vote

http://php.net/manual/en/function.parse-url.php

Some might think this is not a 100% bullet-proof,
but you can give a try as a start

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1  
Although This function is not meant to validate the given URL, it only breaks it up into the above listed parts. – Damien Pirsy Dec 14 '11 at 13:41
@DamienPirsy Indeed, I was going to answer with exactly this, until I started playing with it and discovered that I couldn't actually come up with anything that would make it return false. Even passing "\x00" or "[email protected]" doesn't break it... – DaveRandom Dec 14 '11 at 13:43

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