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

Use validator.js

ES6

import isURL from 'validator/lib/isURL'

isURL(string)

No ES6

var validator = require('validator');

validator.isURL(string)

You can also fine tune this function's behavior by passing optional options object as the second argument of isURL

Here is the default options object:

let options = {
    protocols: [
        'http',
        'https',
        'ftp'
    ],
    require_tld: true,
    require_protocol: false,
    require_host: true,
    require_valid_protocol: true,
    allow_underscores: false,
    host_whitelist: false,
    host_blacklist: false,
    allow_trailing_dot: false,
    allow_protocol_relative_urls: false,
    disallow_auth: false
}

isURL(string, options)

host_whitelist and host_blacklist can be arrays of hosts. They also support regular expressions.

let options = {
    host_blacklist: ['foo.com', 'bar.com'],
}

isURL('http://foobar.com', options) // => true
isURL('http://foo.bar.com/', options) // => true
isURL('http://qux.com', options) // => true

isURL('http://bar.com/', options) // => false
isURL('http://foo.com/', options) // => false


options = {
    host_blacklist: ['bar.com', 'foo.com', /\.foo\.com$/],
}

isURL('http://foobar.com', options) // => true
isURL('http://foo.bar.com/', options) // => true
isURL('http://qux.com', options) // => true

isURL('http://bar.com/', options) // => false
isURL('http://foo.com/', options) // => false
isURL('http://images.foo.com/', options) // => false
isURL('http://cdn.foo.com/', options) // => false
isURL('http://a.b.c.foo.com/', options) // => false