Better way to validate a URL in PHP

Question

I\'ve been reading various posts on Stack Overflow to try and find an ideal way to validate a URL in PHP. My research has come up with three possible solutions, however, no

Answer 1

How about you combine filter_var (which basically is a regex check that spans pages) with additional regex check for cases you don't think are covered well by it?

Answer 2

I ussually use parse_url() for check/validate url (in most case, i need to determine whether the url is already a valid url or a relative url)

if (parse_url($url, PHP_URL_SCHEME) != '')
{
   // Url is absolute
}
else
{
   // Url is not an absolute url, and therefore, need more validation...
}