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

This function disallows localhost and only allows URLs for web pages (ie, only allows http or https protocol).

It also only allows safe characters as defined here: https://www.urlencoder.io/learn/

function isValidWebUrl(url) {
   let regEx = /^https?:\/\/(?:www\.)?[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%._\+~#=]{1,256}\.[a-zA-Z0-9()]{1,6}\b([-a-zA-Z0-9()@:%_\+.~#?&//=]*)$/gm;
   return regEx.test(url);
}