Regular expression '<>' validation

Question

I am currently working on creating a regular expression that will accept URLs and hostnames.

So, the following should be accepted:

 google google.com www.google.com http://google.com http://www.google.com

However, the following should not be taken:

 <xml> <html>

The expression I have received so far:

 ([a-zA-Z0-9])|((http(s)?://)?([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]+(/[\w- ;,./?%&=]*)?)

However, this part of the expression: ([a-zA-Z0-9])
matches <xml> and <html>

Are there any suggestions as to what I am missing here?

+4

Fiona Jul 15 '13 at 15:55

1 answer

pswg · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-15T15:59:38+0000

You need to add the expression start ( ^ ) and end ( $ ) to the expression to make sure that only the pattern you specify is allowed:

 ^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)|((https?://)?([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]+(/[-\w ;,./?%&=]*)?)$