PHP Regex that matches regular, valid URLs only

Question

I'm looking for a regex that matches valid, online URLs only.

For example:

exmaple.com
http://exmaple.com
https://exmaple.com
www.exmaple.com
http://www.example.com
https://www.example.com

And special domains and extensions like:

t.co
example.deals
sh.party

And so on, but won't match all the complicated stuff like ftp , get queries or URLs like 2.3.3.1 .

I've been using '#(www\\.|https?://)?[a-z0-9]+\\.[a-z0-9]{2,4}\\S*#i' but It detects dates , for example 3.3.2017 .

I need this becuase I apply get_headers to every found URL, and when I do get_headers for invalid URLs like a date, I get:

get_headers(http://03.03.2017): failed to open stream: Connection timed out

TL;DR: I'm looking for a Regex that matches only URLs you can apply get_headers() on.

Thanks for helping!

Answer 1

I would say Regex is not the best solution for checking valid URL. It would be better to use FILTER_VALIDATE_URL :

<?php
 $url = "https://www.w3schools.com";

 if (!filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) === false) {
   echo("$url is a valid URL");
 } else {
   echo("$url is not a valid URL");
 }
 ?>

Answer 2

#(https?:\/\/)?([a-z0-9_~-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,5}(\/\S*)?#i

EDIT: Third try: Optional http or https at start. After that follows at least one domain name and a dot, then a top-level domain of 2-5 letters and an optional tail of a backslash and additional non-space characters.