How to get domain name from URL
RegexUrlRegex Problem Overview
How can I fetch a domain name from a URL String?
Examples:
+----------------------+------------+
| input | output |
+----------------------+------------+
| www.google.com | google |
| www.mail.yahoo.com | mail.yahoo |
| www.mail.yahoo.co.in | mail.yahoo |
| www.abc.au.uk | abc |
+----------------------+------------+
Related:
Regex Solutions
Solution 1 - Regex
I once had to write such a regex for a company I worked for. The solution was this:
- Get a list of every ccTLD and gTLD available. Your first stop should be IANA. The list from Mozilla looks great at first sight, but lacks ac.uk for example so for this it is not really usable.
- Join the list like the example below. A warning: Ordering is important! If org.uk would appear after uk then example.org.uk would match org instead of example.
Example regex:
.*([^\.]+)(com|net|org|info|coop|int|co\.uk|org\.uk|ac\.uk|uk|__and so on__)$
This worked really well and also matched weird, unofficial top-levels like de.com and friends.
The upside:
- Very fast if regex is optimally ordered
The downside of this solution is of course:
- Handwritten regex which has to be updated manually if ccTLDs change or get added. Tedious job!
- Very large regex so not very readable.
Solution 2 - Regex
A little late to the party, but:
const urls = [
'www.abc.au.uk',
'https://github.com',
'http://github.ca',
'https://www.google.ru',
'http://www.google.co.uk',
'www.yandex.com',
'yandex.ru',
'yandex'
]
urls.forEach(url => console.log(url.replace(/.+\/\/|www.|\..+/g, '')))
Solution 3 - Regex
Extracting the Domain name accurately can be quite tricky mainly because the domain extension can contain 2 parts (like .com.au or .co.uk) and the subdomain (the prefix) may or may not be there. Listing all domain extensions is not an option because there are hundreds of these. EuroDNS.com for example lists over 800 domain name extensions.
I therefore wrote a short php function that uses 'parse_url()' and some observations about domain extensions to accurately extract the url components AND the domain name. The function is as follows:
function parse_url_all($url){
$url = substr($url,0,4)=='http'? $url: 'http://'.$url;
$d = parse_url($url);
$tmp = explode('.',$d['host']);
$n = count($tmp);
if ($n>=2){
if ($n==4 || ($n==3 && strlen($tmp[($n-2)])<=3)){
$d['domain'] = $tmp[($n-3)].".".$tmp[($n-2)].".".$tmp[($n-1)];
$d['domainX'] = $tmp[($n-3)];
} else {
$d['domain'] = $tmp[($n-2)].".".$tmp[($n-1)];
$d['domainX'] = $tmp[($n-2)];
}
}
return $d;
}
This simple function will work in almost every case. There are a few exceptions, but these are very rare.
To demonstrate / test this function you can use the following:
$urls = array('www.test.com', 'test.com', 'cp.test.com' .....);
echo "<div style='overflow-x:auto;'>";
echo "<table>";
echo "<tr><th>URL</th><th>Host</th><th>Domain</th><th>Domain X</th></tr>";
foreach ($urls as $url) {
$info = parse_url_all($url);
echo "<tr><td>".$url."</td><td>".$info['host'].
"</td><td>".$info['domain']."</td><td>".$info['domainX']."</td></tr>";
}
echo "</table></div>";
The output will be as follows for the URL's listed:
As you can see, the domain name and the domain name without the extension are consistently extracted whatever the URL that is presented to the function.
I hope that this helps.
Solution 4 - Regex
/^(?:www\.)?(.*?)\.(?:com|au\.uk|co\.in)$/
Solution 5 - Regex
There are two ways
Using split
Then just parse that string
var domain;
//find & remove protocol (http, ftp, etc.) and get domain
if (url.indexOf('://') > -1) {
domain = url.split('/')[2];
} if (url.indexOf('//') === 0) {
domain = url.split('/')[2];
} else {
domain = url.split('/')[0];
}
//find & remove port number
domain = domain.split(':')[0];
Using Regex
var r = /:\/\/(.[^/]+)/;
"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5343288/get-url".match(r)[1]
=> stackoverflow.com
Hope this helps
Solution 6 - Regex
I don't know of any libraries, but the string manipulation of domain names is easy enough.
The hard part is knowing if the name is at the second or third level. For this you will need a data file you maintain (e.g. for .uk is is not always the third level, some organisations (e.g. bl.uk, jet.uk) exist at the second level).
The source of Firefox from Mozilla has such a data file, check the Mozilla licensing to see if you could reuse that.
Solution 7 - Regex
import urlparse
GENERIC_TLDS = [
'aero', 'asia', 'biz', 'com', 'coop', 'edu', 'gov', 'info', 'int', 'jobs',
'mil', 'mobi', 'museum', 'name', 'net', 'org', 'pro', 'tel', 'travel', 'cat'
]
def get_domain(url):
hostname = urlparse.urlparse(url.lower()).netloc
if hostname == '':
# Force the recognition as a full URL
hostname = urlparse.urlparse('http://' + uri).netloc
# Remove the 'user:passw', 'www.' and ':port' parts
hostname = hostname.split('@')[-1].split(':')[0].lstrip('www.').split('.')
num_parts = len(hostname)
if (num_parts < 3) or (len(hostname[-1]) > 2):
return '.'.join(hostname[:-1])
if len(hostname[-2]) > 2 and hostname[-2] not in GENERIC_TLDS:
return '.'.join(hostname[:-1])
if num_parts >= 3:
return '.'.join(hostname[:-2])
This code isn't guaranteed to work with all URLs and doesn't filter those that are grammatically correct but invalid like 'example.uk'.
However it'll do the job in most cases.
Solution 8 - Regex
It is not possible without using a TLD list to compare with as their exist many cases like http://www.db.de/ or http://bbc.co.uk/ that will be interpreted by a regex as the domains db.de (correct) and co.uk (wrong).
But even with that you won't have success if your list does not contain SLDs, too. URLs like http://big.uk.com/ and http://www.uk.com/ would be both interpreted as uk.com (the first domain is big.uk.com).
Because of that all browsers use Mozilla's Public Suffix List:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Suffix_List
You can use it in your code by importing it through this URL:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/netwerk/dns/effective_tld_names.dat?raw=1
Feel free to extend my function to extract the domain name, only. It won't use regex and it is fast:
http://www.programmierer-forum.de/domainnamen-ermitteln-t244185.htm#3471878
Solution 9 - Regex
Basically, what you want is:
google.com -> google.com -> google
www.google.com -> google.com -> google
google.co.uk -> google.co.uk -> google
www.google.co.uk -> google.co.uk -> google
www.google.org -> google.org -> google
www.google.org.uk -> google.org.uk -> google
Optional:
www.google.com -> google.com -> www.google
images.google.com -> google.com -> images.google
mail.yahoo.co.uk -> yahoo.co.uk -> mail.yahoo
mail.yahoo.com -> yahoo.com -> mail.yahoo
www.mail.yahoo.com -> yahoo.com -> mail.yahoo
You don't need to construct an ever-changing regex as 99% of domains will be matched properly if you simply look at the 2nd last part of the name:
(co|com|gov|net|org)
If it is one of these, then you need to match 3 dots, else 2. Simple. Now, my regex wizardry is no match for that of some other SO'ers, so the best way I've found to achieve this is with some code, assuming you've already stripped off the path:
my @d=split /\./,$domain; # split the domain part into an array
$c=@d; # count how many parts
$dest=$d[$c-2].'.'.$d[$c-1]; # use the last 2 parts
if ($d[$c-2]=~m/(co|com|gov|net|org)/) { # is the second-last part one of these?
$dest=$d[$c-3].'.'.$dest; # if so, add a third part
};
print $dest; # show it
To just get the name, as per your question:
my @d=split /\./,$domain; # split the domain part into an array
$c=@d; # count how many parts
if ($d[$c-2]=~m/(co|com|gov|net|org)/) { # is the second-last part one of these?
$dest=$d[$c-3]; # if so, give the third last
$dest=$d[$c-4].'.'.$dest if ($c>3); # optional bit
} else {
$dest=$d[$c-2]; # else the second last
$dest=$d[$c-3].'.'.$dest if ($c>2); # optional bit
};
print $dest; # show it
I like this approach because it's maintenance-free. Unless you want to validate that it's actually a legitimate domain, but that's kind of pointless because you're most likely only using this to process log files and an invalid domain wouldn't find its way in there in the first place.
If you'd like to match "unofficial" subdomains such as bozo.za.net, or bozo.au.uk, bozo.msf.ru just add (za|au|msf) to the regex.
I'd love to see someone do all of this using just a regex, I'm sure it's possible.
Solution 10 - Regex
/[^w{3}\.]([a-zA-Z0-9]([a-zA-Z0-9\-]{0,65}[a-zA-Z0-9])?\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,6}/gim
usage of this javascript regex ignores www and following dot, while retaining the domain intact. also properly matches no www and cc tld
Solution 11 - Regex
So if you just have a string and not a window.location you could use...
String.prototype.toUrl = function(){
if(!this && 0 < this.length)
{
return undefined;
}
var original = this.toString();
var s = original;
if(!original.toLowerCase().startsWith('http'))
{
s = 'http://' + original;
}
s = this.split('/');
var protocol = s[0];
var host = s[2];
var relativePath = '';
if(s.length > 3){
for(var i=3;i< s.length;i++)
{
relativePath += '/' + s[i];
}
}
s = host.split('.');
var domain = s[s.length-2] + '.' + s[s.length-1];
return {
original: original,
protocol: protocol,
domain: domain,
host: host,
relativePath: relativePath,
getParameter: function(param)
{
return this.getParameters()[param];
},
getParameters: function(){
var vars = [], hash;
var hashes = this.original.slice(this.original.indexOf('?') + 1).split('&');
for (var i = 0; i < hashes.length; i++) {
hash = hashes[i].split('=');
vars.push(hash[0]);
vars[hash[0]] = hash[1];
}
return vars;
}
};};
How to use.
var str = "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knopf?q=1&t=2";
var url = str.toUrl;
var host = url.host;
var domain = url.domain;
var original = url.original;
var relativePath = url.relativePath;
var paramQ = url.getParameter('q');
var paramT = url.getParamter('t');
Solution 12 - Regex
For a certain purpose I did this quick Python function yesterday. It returns domain from URL. It's quick and doesn't need any input file listing stuff. However, I don't pretend it works in all cases, but it really does the job I needed for a simple text mining script.
Output looks like this :
http://www.google.co.uk => google.co.uk
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m04s34rqh567ij78k_250.gif => tumblr.com
def getDomain(url):
parts = re.split("\/", url)
match = re.match("([\w\-]+\.)*([\w\-]+\.\w{2,6}$)", parts[2])
if match != None:
if re.search("\.uk", parts[2]):
match = re.match("([\w\-]+\.)*([\w\-]+\.[\w\-]+\.\w{2,6}$)", parts[2])
return match.group(2)
else: return ''
Seems to work pretty well.
However, it has to be modified to remove domain extensions on output as you wished.
Solution 13 - Regex
- how is this
=((?:(?:(?:http)s?:)?\/\/)?(?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+)\.?)*(?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+))\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{2,3})
(you may want to add "\/" to end of pattern
-
if your goal is to rid url's passed in as a param you may add the equal sign as the first char, like:
=((?:(?:(?:http)s?:)?//)?(?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+).?)*(?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+)).[a-zA-Z0-9]{2,3}/)
and replace with "/"
The goal of this example to get rid of any domain name regardless of the form it appears in. (i.e. to ensure url parameters don't incldue domain names to avoid xss attack)
Solution 14 - Regex
Could you just look for the word before .com (or other) (the order of the other list would be the opposite of the frequency see here
and take the first matching group i.e.
window.location.host.match(/(\w|-)+(?=(\.(com|net|org|info|coop|int|co|ac|ie|co|ai|eu|ca|icu|top|xyz|tk|cn|ga|cf|nl|us|eu|de|hk|am|tv|bingo|blackfriday|gov|edu|mil|arpa|au|ru)(\.|\/|$)))/g)[0]
You can test it could by copying this line into the developers' console on any tab
This example works in the following cases:
Solution 15 - Regex
All answers here are very nice, but all will fails sometime. So i know it is not common to link something else, already answered elsewhere, but you'll find that you have to not waste your time into impossible thing. This because domains like mydomain.co.uk there is no way to know if an extracted domain is correct. If you speak about to extract by URLs, something that ever have http or https or nothing in front (but if it is possible nothing in front, you have to remove
filter_var($url, filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL))
here below, because FILTER_VALIDATE_URL do not recognize as url a string that do not begin with http, so may remove it, and you can also achieve with something stupid like this, that never will fail:
$url = strtolower('hTTps://www.example.com/w3/forum/index.php');
if( filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) && substr($url, 0, 4) == 'http' )
{
// array order is !important
$domain = str_replace(array("http://www.","https://www.","http://","https://"), array("","","",""), $url);
$spos = strpos($domain,'/');
if($spos !== false)
{
$domain = substr($domain, 0, $spos);
} } else { $domain = "can't extract a domain"; }
echo $domain;
Check FILTER_VALIDATE_URL default behavior here
But, if you want to check a domain for his validity, and ALWAYS be sure that the extracted value is correct, then you have to check against an array of valid top domains, as explained here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/70566657/6399448 or you'll NEVER be sure that the extracted string is the correct domain. Unfortunately, all the answers here sometime will fails.
P.s the unique answer that make sense here seem to me this (i did not read it before sorry. It provide the same solution, even if do not provide an example as mine above mentioned or linked): https://stackoverflow.com/a/569219/6399448
Solution 16 - Regex
I know you actually asked for Regex and were not specific to a language. But In Javascript you can do this like this. Maybe other languages can parse URL in a similar way.
Easy Javascript solution
const domain = (new URL(str)).hostname.replace("www.", "");
Leave this solution in js for completeness.
Solution 17 - Regex
You need a list of what domain prefixes and suffixes can be removed. For example:
Prefixes:
www.
Suffixes:
.com.co.in.au.uk
Solution 18 - Regex
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $url = $ARGV[0];
if($url =~ /([^:]*:\/\/)?([^\/]*\.)*([^\/\.]+)\.[^\/]+/g) {
print $3;
}
Solution 19 - Regex
/^(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?([^\/]+)/i
Solution 20 - Regex
Use this (.)(.*?)(.) then just extract the leading and end points. Easy, right?
Solution 21 - Regex
Just for knowledge:
'http://api.livreto.co/books'.replace(/^(https?:\/\/)([a-z]{3}[0-9]?\.)?(\w+)(\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3})(\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3})?.*$/, '$3$4$5');
# returns livreto.co
Solution 22 - Regex
I know the question is seeking a regex solution but in every attempt it won't work to cover everything
I decided to write this method in Python which only works with urls that have a subdomain (i.e. www.mydomain.co.uk) and not multiple level subdomains like www.mail.yahoo.com
def urlextract(url):
url_split=url.split(".")
if len(url_split) <= 2:
raise Exception("Full url required with subdomain:",url)
return {'subdomain': url_split[0], 'domain': url_split[1], 'suffix': ".".join(url_split[2:])}
Solution 23 - Regex
Let's say we have this: http://google.com
and you only want the domain name
let url = http://google.com;
let domainName = url.split("://")[1];
console.log(domainName);