JavaScript Regex to match a URL in a field of text

Question

How can I setup my regex to test to see if a URL is contained in a block of text in javascript. I cant quite figure out the pattern to use to accomplish this

Answer 1

You have to escape the backslash when you are using new RegExp.

Also you can put the dash - at the end of character class to avoid escaping it.

& inside a character class means & or a or m or p or ; , you just need to put & and ; , a, m and p are already match by \w.

So, your regex becomes:

var urlexp = new RegExp( '(http|ftp|https)://[\\w-]+(\\.[\\w-]+)+([\\w-.,@?^=%&:/~+#-]*[\\w@?^=%&;/~+#-])?' );

Answer 2

I've cleaned up your regex:

var urlexp = new RegExp('(http|ftp|https)://[a-z0-9\-_]+(\.[a-z0-9\-_]+)+([a-z0-9\-\.,@\?^=%&;:/~\+#]*[a-z0-9\-@\?^=%&;/~\+#])?', 'i');

Tested and works just fine ;)