Check if a JavaScript string is a URL

Question

Is there a way in JavaScript to check if a string is a URL?

RegExes are excluded because the URL is most likely written like stackoverflow; that is to s

Answer 1

One function that I have been using to validate a URL "string" is:

var matcher = /^(?:\w+:)?\/\/([^\s\.]+\.\S{2}|localhost[\:?\d]*)\S*$/;

function isUrl(string){
  return matcher.test(string);
}

This function will return a boolean whether the string is a URL.

Examples:

isUrl("https://google.com");     // true
isUrl("http://google.com");      // true
isUrl("http://google.de");       // true
isUrl("//google.de");            // true
isUrl("google.de");              // false
isUrl("http://google.com");      // true
isUrl("http://localhost");       // true
isUrl("https://sdfasd");         // false