Regular Expressions Cookbook

7.15. Validating Domain Names

Problem

You want to check whether a string looks like it may be a valid, fully qualified domain name, or find such domain names in longer text.

Solution

Check whether a string looks like a valid domain name:

^([a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*\.)+[a-z]{2,}$

Regex options: Case insensitive

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

\A([a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*\.)+[a-z]{2,}\Z

Regex options: Case insensitive

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

Find valid domain names in longer text:

\b([a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*\.)+[a-z]{2,}\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

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

Check whether each part of the domain is not longer than 63 characters:

\b((?=[a-z0-9-]{1,63}\.)[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*\.)+[a-z]{2,63}\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

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

Allow internationalized domain names using the punycode notation:

\b((xn--)?[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*\.)+[a-z]{2,}\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

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

Check whether each part of the domain is not longer than 63 characters, and allow internationalized domain names using the punycode notation:

\b((?=[a-z0-9-]{1,63}\.)(xn--)?[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*\.)+[a-z]{2,63}\b

Regex options: Case insensitive

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

Discussion

A domain name has the form of domain.tld, or subdomain.domain.tld, or any number of additional subdomains. ...