URLs and preg_match (again)

[Justin Koivisto]

OK, I found a thread that help out from a while back (Oct 9, 2002) to
give me this pattern:

`(((f|ht)tp://)(([^@:]+)([^@]+)?@)?([^:\/])+(:\d+)?(\/[^\s]+)?)`i

OK, all is well and good with this until the URL is used at the end of a
sentance. I am assuming that I will need a negative lookahead somehow,
but I just can't wrap my mind around this one...

Want to match only the URL...

$string="... http://www.example.com .";
$string="... http://www.example.com/.";
$string="... http://www.example.com/page1.html?";
$string="... http://www.example.com/info.php?id=4!" ;
etc...

The pattern above is pulling the last character from each string when I
don't want it. Unfortunately, the URL can be _anything_ valid, and I
don't have control of how it will be input. Can anyone help with this?

TIA

--
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PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
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[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

Justin Koivisto <spam@koivi.com > wrote in message news:<eoEec.503 $m3.20915@news7 .onvoy.net>...[color=blue]
> OK, I found a thread that help out from a while back (Oct 9, 2002) to
> give me this pattern:
>
> `(((f|ht)tp://)(([^@:]+)([^@]+)?@)?([^:\/])+(:\d+)?(\/[^\s]+)?)`i
>
> OK, all is well and good with this until the URL is used at the end of a
> sentance. I am assuming that I will need a negative lookahead somehow,
> but I just can't wrap my mind around this one...
>
> Want to match only the URL...
>
> $string="... http://www.example.com .";
> $string="... http://www.example.com/.";
> $string="... http://www.example.com/page1.html?";
> $string="... http://www.example.com/info.php?id=4!" ;
> etc...
>
> The pattern above is pulling the last character from each string when I
> don't want it. Unfortunately, the URL can be _anything_ valid, and I
> don't have control of how it will be input. Can anyone help with this?[/color]


It is somewhat shocking to see even experts like Justin are lost in
regular expressions.

I must admit the fact that I'm still poor in regular expression even
though I use two good tools: <http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/> and
<http://laurent.riester er.free.fr/regexp/>

I think, for your requirement this will work fine: (stolen from
<http://groups.google.c om/groups?selm=4d1 9834f.030307041 8.506bb9a5%40po sting.google.co m>
;-) )

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

--
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Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com

[John Dunlop]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

Justin Koivisto wrote:
[color=blue]
> OK, I found a thread that help out from a while back (Oct 9, 2002)[/color]

If it was http://groups.google.com/groups?th=a48518c6e18574d9 , I
caution you against blindly following advice from that thread. It's
clear from Jeff Donnici's original article he wanted to *match* URIs,
not *parse* them. Why on earth this curiosity was put forward I don't
know (note, in particular, the delimiter appears unescaped in the
pattern proper -- a sure sign of insufficient testing):

| /((f|ht)tp://)(([^@:]+)([^@]+)?@)?([^:\/])+(:\d+)?(\/[^\s]+)?/

You evidently noticed and mended the delimiter:
[color=blue]
> `(((f|ht)tp://)(([^@:]+)([^@]+)?@)?([^:\/])+(:\d+)?(\/[^\s]+)?)`i
>
> OK, all is well and good with this[/color]

Consider the string: "http:// Lorem ipsum ... est laborum".

Negative character classes match every character not in the class. In
this case, that includes whitespace characters, which aren't allowed
in URIs.
[color=blue]
> until the URL is used at the end of a sentance.[/color]

It's not just sentence terminators that rattle that regular
expression: intra sentence spacing, words and punctuation all wreak
havoc too. It might be OK for *parsing* URIs [1], I don't know, I
didn't examine it and I'm not conversant with FTP URI syntax; but its
URI *matching* rates very poorly.
[color=blue]
> I am assuming that I will need a negative lookahead somehow,
> but I just can't wrap my mind around this one...
>
> Want to match only the URL...[/color]

That depends on the URL, obviously; regular expressions, although
powerful in some senses, afford no mind-reading capabilities.
[color=blue]
> $string="... http://www.example.com .";[/color]

Any URI parser would recognise <http://www.example.com .> as a URI: an
HTTP URI with a complete, or absolute, domain name of
"www.example.co m." (including the final period; the root label).
[color=blue]
> $string="... http://www.example.com/.";[/color]

Again, an HTTP URI, this time with a path segment of ".". The final
period does not have any special meaning here; it's simply a path
segment.
[color=blue]
> $string="... http://www.example.com/page1.html?";[/color]

Another HTTP URI, but with a path segment of "page1.html " and an empty
query component.
[color=blue]
> $string="... http://www.example.com/info.php?id=4!" ;[/color]

Yet another HTTP URI, this time with a path segment of "info.php" and
a query component of "id=4!".
[color=blue]
> The pattern above is pulling the last character from each string when I
> don't want it.[/color]

So you know what the URIs are beforehand, right?
[color=blue]
> Unfortunately, the URL can be _anything_ valid, and I don't have control
> of how it will be input.[/color]

I'm not sure what you mean.
[color=blue]
> Can anyone help with this?[/color]

We'd need more information to offer any help. You might be interested
in Appendix E of RFC2396, which discusses recommended ways to delimit
URIs. I'd like to say, in passing, that it makes no mention of the
increasing use of parentheses ("(" and ")") to delimit URIs; the right
parenthesis is allowed in a path segment, so the URI

http://www.php.net/manual/en/)

results in a 404 (at least it did at the time I wrote this,
20040414T0703Z) .

As an example of how involved URI *matching* can be, here's a regular
expression (PCRE) to match HTTP URIs (please excuse any line wrap):

`(?:(?i)http)://(?:(?:(?:(?:[a-z\d][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-z\d])\.)*(?:[a-
z][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-
z])\.?)|(?:\d+\.\ d+\.\d+\.\d+))( ?::\d*)?(?:(?:/(?:(?:(?:[a-
z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})*(?:;(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-
:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})*)*)(?:/(?:(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-
f]{2})*(?:;(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-
f]{2})*)*))*))(?: \?(?:[;/?:@&=+$,a-z\d\-_.!~*\'()]|%[\da-f])*)?)?`i

Splitting it into more manageable chunks:

$scheme = '(?:(?i)http)';
$domainlabel = '(?:[a-z\d][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-z\d])';
$toplabel = '(?:[a-z][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-z])';
$hostname = "(?:(?:$domainl abel\.)*$toplab el\.?)";
$ipv4address = '(?:\d+\.\d+\.\ d+\.\d+)';
$host = "(?:$hostname|$ ipv4address)";
$port = '(?::\d*)';
$pchar = '(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})';
$param = "$pchar*";
$segment = "(?:$pchar*(?:; $param)*)";
$path_segments = "(?:$segmen t(?:/$segment)*)";
$abspath = "(?:/$path_segments) ";
$query = '(?:\?(?:[;/?:@&=+$,a-z\d\-_.!~*\'()]|%[\da-f])*)';
$http_uri = "$scheme://$host$port?(?:$ abspath$query?) ?";
$pattern = "`$http_uri `i";

preg_match_all( $pattern,$subje ct,$matches)

You might care to omit the case sensitive internal option affecting
the scheme name. Scheme names should be lowercase, but, "[f]or
resiliency, programs interpreting URI should treat upper case letters
as equivalent to lower case" (RFC2396, sec. 3.1). Technically, a URI
with an uppercase scheme name isn't an absolute URI.

Refs.:

RFC2396, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax",

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

RFC2616, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", section 3.2,

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt

RFC1738, "Uniform Resource Locators (URL)", section 3.2,

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt

[1] You'll have read the example POSIX regular expression in RFC2396
for parsing URI references. From Appendix B:

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

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

--
Jock

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

John Dunlop <usenet+2004@jo hn.dunlop.name> wrote in message news:<MPG.1ae6f 892abcbfae69896 e8@News.Individ ual.NET>...[color=blue]
> Justin Koivisto wrote:[/color]
<snip>[color=blue]
> As an example of how involved URI *matching* can be, here's a regular
> expression (PCRE) to match HTTP URIs (please excuse any line wrap):
>
> `(?:(?i)http)://(?:(?:(?:(?:[a-z\d][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-z\d])\.)*(?:[a-
> z][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-
> z])\.?)|(?:\d+\.\ d+\.\d+\.\d+))( ?::\d*)?(?:(?:/(?:(?:(?:[a-
> z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})*(?:;(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-
> :@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})*)*)(?:/(?:(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-
> f]{2})*(?:;(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-
> f]{2})*)*))*))(?: \?(?:[;/?:@&=+$,a-z\d\-_.!~*\'()]|%[\da-f])*)?)?`i[/color]
<snip>

WOW!! I wonder, how could you swap the whole RFCs in your brain...

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Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com

[Justin Koivisto]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah wrote:
[color=blue]
> Justin Koivisto <spam@koivi.com > wrote in message news:<eoEec.503 $m3.20915@news7 .onvoy.net>...
>[color=green]
>>OK, I found a thread that help out from a while back (Oct 9, 2002) to
>>give me this pattern:
>>
>>`(((f|ht)tp ://)(([^@:]+)([^@]+)?@)?([^:\/])+(:\d+)?(\/[^\s]+)?)`i
>>
>>OK, all is well and good with this until the URL is used at the end of a
>>sentance. I am assuming that I will need a negative lookahead somehow,
>>but I just can't wrap my mind around this one...
>>
>>Want to match only the URL...
>>
>>$string=".. . http://www.example.com .";
>>$string=".. . http://www.example.com/.";
>>$string=".. . http://www.example.com/page1.html?";
>>$string=".. . http://www.example.com/info.php?id=4!" ;
>>etc...
>>
>>The pattern above is pulling the last character from each string when I
>>don't want it. Unfortunately, the URL can be _anything_ valid, and I
>>don't have control of how it will be input. Can anyone help with this?[/color]
>
> It is somewhat shocking to see even experts like Justin are lost in
> regular expressions.[/color]

I'm considered an expert? THANKS FOR THE COMPLIMENT! ;) I'm OK with
regex, but I have only started really using perl regex in the last year,
so I have a way to go to learn about it.
[color=blue]
> I must admit the fact that I'm still poor in regular expression even
> though I use two good tools: <http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/> and
> <http://laurent.riester er.free.fr/regexp/>[/color]

Heh, I think I will have to check those out... thanks for the links.
[color=blue]
> I think, for your requirement this will work fine: (stolen from
> <http://groups.google.c om/groups?selm=4d1 9834f.030307041 8.506bb9a5%40po sting.google.co m>
> ;-) )
>
> (((http|ftp|htt ps):\/\/[\w]+(.[\w]+)([\w\-\.,@?^=%&:/~\+#]*[\w\-\@?^=%&/~\+#])?))|(www.)|(ft p.)[/color]

hmm... Never even thought of looking in a VB newsgroup...

I've pasted it in, and it worked for the 2 available tests I had in
place. I'll let you know if there are any problems with it, and post
whatever I can come up with for fixes.

--
Justin Koivisto - spam@koivi.com
PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
alt.php* groups are not recommended.
SEO Competition League: http://seo.koivi.com/

[Justin Koivisto]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

John Dunlop wrote:[color=blue]
>
> We'd need more information to offer any help. You might be interested
> in Appendix E of RFC2396[/color]

Basically, what I am doing is making hyperlinks out of urls typed into a
text area. So I am trying to match urls, but need to parse for
punctuation after them.

....
[color=blue]
> As an example of how involved URI *matching* can be, here's a regular
> expression (PCRE) to match HTTP URIs (please excuse any line wrap):
>
> $scheme = '(?:(?i)http)';
> $domainlabel = '(?:[a-z\d][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-z\d])';
> $toplabel = '(?:[a-z][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-z])';
> $hostname = "(?:(?:$domainl abel\.)*$toplab el\.?)";
> $ipv4address = '(?:\d+\.\d+\.\ d+\.\d+)';
> $host = "(?:$hostname|$ ipv4address)";
> $port = '(?::\d*)';
> $pchar = '(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})';
> $param = "$pchar*";
> $segment = "(?:$pchar*(?:; $param)*)";
> $path_segments = "(?:$segmen t(?:/$segment)*)";
> $abspath = "(?:/$path_segments) ";
> $query = '(?:\?(?:[;/?:@&=+$,a-z\d\-_.!~*\'()]|%[\da-f])*)';
> $http_uri = "$scheme://$host$port?(?:$ abspath$query?) ?";
> $pattern = "`$http_uri `i";
>
> preg_match_all( $pattern,$subje ct,$matches)[/color]

Honestly, I've never actually read an RFC dealing with internet
protocols. (The only one I read was on the RTF file format, and gave up
on that about 1/2 way through.)

Interesting though that the above pattern makes some odd results:

http://waf.rangenet.com/Edit1.php

I think I will have to play some more with the patterns that were posted
in this thread and see what I can make of them.

--
Justin Koivisto - spam@koivi.com
PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
alt.php* groups are not recommended.
SEO Competition League: http://seo.koivi.com/

[Justin Koivisto]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah wrote:[color=blue]
> (((http|ftp|htt ps):\/\/[\w]+(.[\w]+)([\w\-\.,@?^=%&:/~\+#]*[\w\-\@?^=%&/~\+#])?))|(www.)|(ft p.)[/color]

This was nearly what I was looking for. I ended up editing a bit to come
up with:
(((https?|ftp)://[\w]+(\.[\w]+)([\w.,@?^=%&:/~\+#-]*[^?.,!:;\s])?))

Which seems to be working right now. I'm a little suspicious of the
"[^?.,!:;\s]" part - I assumed that I'd need some kind of look-ahead to
do it. Anyway, here's the results:

http://waf.rangenet.com/Edit2.php

The last 7 urls had a space appeneded to the end (see source), so the
results are what I was expecting to get.

Thanks to those who replied!

--
Justin Koivisto - spam@koivi.com
PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
alt.php* groups are not recommended.
SEO Competition League: http://seo.koivi.com/

[John Dunlop]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

Justin Koivisto wrote:
[color=blue]
> John Dunlop wrote:[/color]

[ ... ]
[color=blue][color=green]
> > $http_uri = "$scheme://$host$port?(?:$ abspath$query?) ?";[/color][/color]

[ ... ]
[color=blue]
> Interesting though that the above pattern makes some odd results:
> http://waf.rangenet.com/Edit1.php[/color]

The pattern on that page isn't identical to my offering. Compare

$http_uri = "$scheme://$host$port?(?:$ abspath$query?) ?";

and

| $http_uri = $scheme.'://'.$host.$port.' ?(?:'.$abspath. $query.'.?)?';
----------------------------------------------------------------^

That final period significantly alters the match. If the URI contains
a path, it must now end with a query component (or, at least, a "?"
followed by an empty query component), for $query is no longer
optional. Therefore, when applied to <http://domain.example/foo>, the
pattern matches <http://domain.example> only.

Fix it by removing the offending period.

--
Jock

[Chung Leong]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

"R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah" <ng4rrjanbiah@r ediffmail.com> wrote in message
news:abc4d8b8.0 404132035.64a53 919@posting.goo gle.com...[color=blue]
> Justin Koivisto <spam@koivi.com > wrote in message[/color]
news:<eoEec.503 $m3.20915@news7 .onvoy.net>...[color=blue]
> It is somewhat shocking to see even experts like Justin are lost in
> regular expressions.
>
> I must admit the fact that I'm still poor in regular expression even
> though I use two good tools: <http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/> and
> <http://laurent.riester er.free.fr/regexp/>[/color]

The camel book sits on my desk ever though I'm programming in PHP.

What is needed here is the magical \b meta character:

$re = '/(((https?|ftp): \/\/[\w]+(\.[\w]+)([^\s]*)?))(\/|\b)/i';

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

Justin Koivisto <spam@koivi.com > wrote in message news:<XScfc.548 $m3.23401@news7 .onvoy.net>...[color=blue]
> John Dunlop wrote:[/color]
<snip>[color=blue]
>
> Interesting though that the above pattern makes some odd results:
> http://waf.rangenet.com/Edit1.php
>
> I think I will have to play some more with the patterns that were posted
> in this thread and see what I can make of them.[/color]

IMHO, it is better to stay with RFC standards as John says. As John
said, I think, the problem might be within splitting the pattern. I
have tried all your urls with "The Regex Coach"
<http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/> with the following pattern:

(?:(?i)http)://(?:(?:(?:(?:[a-z\d][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-z\d])\.)*(?:[a-z][a-z\d-]*[a-z\d]|[a-z])\.?)|(?:\d+\.\ d+\.\d+\.\d+))( ?::\d*)?(?:(?:/(?:(?:(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})*(?:;(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})*)*)(?:/(?:(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})*(?:;(?:[a-z\d_.!~*\'()\-:@&=+$,]|%[\da-f]{2})*)*))*))(?: \?(?:[;/?:@&=+$,a-z\d\-_.!~*\'()]|%[\da-f])*)?)?

It is working fine for all your urls *except* for domains with "_"
(underscores) eg. http://www.ex_ample.com/ . If I'm right that is also
correct. Hope, John will comment on it.

--
http://www.sendmetoindia.com - Send Me to India!
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com

[Justin Koivisto]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

John Dunlop wrote:[color=blue]
> The pattern on that page isn't identical to my offering. Compare
>
> $http_uri = "$scheme://$host$port?(?:$ abspath$query?) ?";
>
> and
>
> | $http_uri = $scheme.'://'.$host.$port.' ?(?:'.$abspath. $query.'.?)?';
> ----------------------------------------------------------------^
>
> That final period significantly alters the match. If the URI contains
> a path, it must now end with a query component (or, at least, a "?"
> followed by an empty query component), for $query is no longer
> optional. Therefore, when applied to <http://domain.example/foo>, the
> pattern matches <http://domain.example> only.
>
> Fix it by removing the offending period.[/color]

My mistake... I now removed the extra period. However, still picks up
the ending punctuation like "!" and "?" for strings like:

http://www.example.com/?

http://www.example.com/!
http://www.example.com/dirname/file.html!
http://www.example.com/dirname/file.html?query =My+Test+String &q2=search!

I can see that the last one is a bit misleading since that does look
like part of the query string.

Another one that I noticed is:
http://www.ex_ample.com

Are underscored not allowed in a domain name, is this part of the RFC,
or just an overlook in the pattern?

--
Justin Koivisto - spam@koivi.com
PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
alt.php* groups are not recommended.
SEO Competition League: http://seo.koivi.com/

[Justin Koivisto]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

Chung Leong wrote:
[color=blue]
> "R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah" <ng4rrjanbiah@r ediffmail.com> wrote in message
> news:abc4d8b8.0 404132035.64a53 919@posting.goo gle.com...
>[color=green]
>>Justin Koivisto <spam@koivi.com > wrote in message[/color]
>
> news:<eoEec.503 $m3.20915@news7 .onvoy.net>...
>[color=green]
>> It is somewhat shocking to see even experts like Justin are lost in
>>regular expressions.
>>
>> I must admit the fact that I'm still poor in regular expression even
>>though I use two good tools: <http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/> and
>><http://laurent.riester er.free.fr/regexp/>[/color]
>
> The camel book sits on my desk ever though I'm programming in PHP.
>
> What is needed here is the magical \b meta character:
>
> $re = '/(((https?|ftp): \/\/[\w]+(\.[\w]+)([^\s]*)?))(\/|\b)/i';[/color]

I had tried using the \b metacharacter, but I see that I didn't use ( /
| \b ), and this likely why it didn't work for me. This shortened
pattern seems to be doing the trick so far.

Thanks to all who have contributed!

--
Justin Koivisto - spam@koivi.com
PHP POSTERS: Please use comp.lang.php for PHP related questions,
alt.php* groups are not recommended.
SEO Competition League: http://seo.koivi.com/

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

"Chung Leong" <chernyshevsky@ hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<X6OdnX5-7tTsQeDdRVn_iw@ comcast.com>...[color=blue]
> "R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah" <ng4rrjanbiah@r ediffmail.com> wrote in message
> news:abc4d8b8.0 404132035.64a53 919@posting.goo gle.com...[/color]

<snip>[color=blue]
> The camel book sits on my desk ever though I'm programming in PHP.[/color]

Yes, camel book is unbeatable. But, most of the time I used to
refer this quick table for most of my silly works
<http://www.phpedit.net/products/PHPEdit/manual/en/module.FindRegE xp.php#Lv1_7>

--
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Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com

[John Dunlop]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah wrote:

[ ... ]
[color=blue]
> It is working fine for all your urls *except* for domains with "_"
> (underscores) eg. http://www.ex_ample.com/ .[/color]

Hostnames cannot contain underscores; they may only contain letters
([a-zA-Z]), numbers ([0-9]), hyphens ([-]) and periods ([.]). Further
restrictions apply too. RFC952, as updated by RFC1123, specifies the
syntax of hostnames; the definition is: one or more names (a letter or
digit followed by any number of letters, digits or hyphens and ending
with a letter or digit) separated by periods.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc952.txt

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1123.txt

--
Jock

[John Dunlop]

Re: URLs and preg_match (again)

Justin Koivisto wrote:
[color=blue]
> However, still picks up the ending punctuation like "!" and "?" for
> strings like:
> http://www.example.com/?
> http://www.example.com/!
> http://www.example.com/dirname/file.html!
> http://www.example.com/dirname/file.html?query =My+Test+String &q2=search![/color]

How do you know the "ending punctuation" isn't part of the URI?

--
Jock