PHP Forms Validate URL
Form validation is a necessary process that must be done before submitting the data to the database. Any time a user submits a URL, it becomes crucial to investigate whether the given URL is valid or not. We can use PHP to validate the URLs that are submitted through an HTML form.
Table of Content
- Using filter_var( ) Function
- Using preg_match( ) Function
Using filter_var( ) Function
To validate a URL, the first approach is to use the filter_var( ) method with the FILTER_VALIDATE_URL filter. This method is widely used in PHP to filter a variable with a specific filter. It ensures that URLs are correctly formatted and secure, thus reducing the chances of security vulnerabilities.
Example: Implementation to validate URL in PHP Forms using filter_var( ).
PHP
<?php // Taking a sample URL $url = "https://www.example.in" ; // Checking if the URL is valid or not if (filter_var( $url , FILTER_VALIDATE_URL)) { echo "$url is a VALID URL" ; } else { echo "$url is a INVALID URL" ; } ?> |
https://www.example.in is a VALID URL
Using preg_match( ) Function
The preg_match( ) method is commonly used to search the given string using a pattern. This pattern is created using regular expression.
Example: Implementation to validate URL in PHP Forms using preg_match( )
PHP
<?php // Taking a sample URL $url = "https://www.example.in" ; // Checking if the URL is valid or not if ( preg_match( "/\b(?:(?:https?|ftp):\/\/|www\.)[-a-z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-a-z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|]/i" , $url ) ) { echo "$url is a VALID URL" ; } else { echo "$url is a INVALID URL" ; } ?> |
https://www.example.in is a VALID URL