What's the best way to compare this in VB.net

Question

I would like to ask you, what your opinion is on the best way to compare URLs. Lets say there are 10 available formats for a URL. I've listed them below.

• http://domain.com
• https://domain.com
• http://www.domain.com
• https://www.domain.com
• www.domain.com
• domain.com

and some more with slash in the end.

• http://domain.com/
• https://domain.com/
• http://www.domain.com/
• https://www.domain.com/
• www.domain.com/
• domain.com/

What would be the best solution for easily comparing if these URLs match an item in a listbox. I'm currently doing something else, which constructs 3 different URLs. But the code is too messy, and I'm looking for something a bit cleaner.

I'm looking for a bit something like the code below.

But how well, would this actually compare the two URLs?

For Each result As String In lb_results.Items
   If String.Compare(result, "urls to compare") Then

   End If
Next

Answer 1

if your simply comparing "domain.com" to its variants and need to strip this out...

quickly normalize the string so that the domain name and extension must be between periods.

MessyURL = Replace(MessyURL, "/", ".").Trim

get rid of the last pesky last slash which is now a period if its there.

If Mid(MessyURL, MessyURL.Length, 1) = "." Then
         MessyURL = Mid(MessyURL, 1, MessyURL.Length - 1)

Put the name, a dot, and the com (or whatever) back together.

Dim TestName As String

TestName= MessyURL.Split(".").ElementAt(MessyURL.Split(".").Count - 2) &
 "." & MessyURL.Split(".").ElementAt(MessyURL.Split(".").Count - 1)

and whala, a nice 'domain.com' testname name to compare against a list, and or insert into the list if its not there...

  If MyListOfUrLs.Items.IndexOf(TestName) = -1 then  MyListOfUrLs.Items.Add(TestName)

Answer 2

YOu want just to check if the URLs are the same site use:

For Each result As String In lb_results.Items
   If result.Contains("domain") = True Then
         MsgBox("They have the same URL")
   End If
Next