Regular Expressions Cookbook

7.8. Extracting the Scheme from a URL

Problem

You want to extract the URL scheme from a string that holds a URL. For example, you want to extract http from http://www.regexcookbook.com.

Solution

Extract the scheme from a URL known to be valid

^([a-z][a-z0-9+\-.]*):

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Extract the scheme while validating the URL

\A
([a-z][a-z0-9+\-.]*):
(# Authority & path
 //
 ([a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=]+@)?              # User
 ([a-z0-9\-._~%]+                            # Named host
 |\[[a-f0-9:.]+\]                            # IPv6 host
 |\[v[a-f0-9][a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:]+\])  # IPvFuture host
 (:[0-9]+)?                                  # Port
 (/[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)*/?          # Path
|# Path without authority
 (/?[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+(/[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)*/?)?
)
# Query
(\?[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?
# Fragment
(\#[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?
\Z

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

^([a-z][a-z0-9+\-.]*):(//([a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=]+@)?([a-z0-9\-._~%]+|↵
\[[a-f0-9:.]+\]|\[v[a-f0-9][a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:]+\])(:[0-9]+)?↵
(/[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)*/?|(/?[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+↵
(/[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)*/?)?)(\?[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?↵
(#[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?$

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python

Discussion

Extracting the scheme from a URL is easy if you already know that your subject text is a valid URL. A URL’s scheme always occurs at the very start of the ...