Regular Expressions Cookbook

7.9. Extracting the User from a URL

Problem

You want to extract the user from a string that holds a URL. For example, you want to extract jan from ftp://[e-mail].

Solution

Extract the user from a URL known to be valid

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

Regex options: Case insensitive

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

Extract the user while validating the URL

\A
[a-z][a-z0-9+\-.]*://                       # Scheme
([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\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@]+)*/?          # Path
(\?[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?         # Query
(\#[a-z0-9\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?         # Fragment
\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\-._~%!$&'()*+,;=:@/?]*)?$

Regex options: Case insensitive

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

Discussion

Extracting the user from a URL is easy if you already know that your subject text is a valid URL. The username, if present in the URL, occurs right after the scheme and the two forward slashes that begin the “authority” part of the URL. The username is separated from the hostname that follows it with an @ sign. Since @ signs ...