newbie: checking URL with a regular expression and eregi()

j0sh

hi all.

i'm very new to regular expressions and i wanna check the validness of an url with eregi().

the url has the following style:

first there come 2 chars (e.g. "eg" or "de") for the language. after this there's a slash "/".
now there can come an endless number of rubrics, all separated with slashes. the rubrics can contain chars, numbers and "-", but nothing else.
in the end there comes the item, it's different to the rubrics because it's in the end and it has the suffix ".html" and also can contain commas ",".

so a valid link would be

eg/rubric-1/another-rubric/the-last-rubric/chosen-item,1,2.html

now how can i do that with a regex? i tried some hours but do not succeed, even after reading tutorials on google... :-/

i'd be very happy if you could help me.

greets
Josh

bubblenut

Well I'm going to show you how to do it using PCRE as well just for the sake of completeness (an to show off of course 😉). PCRE is quicker in almost all cases and supports a number of features absent in POSIX regex (not that they're necesarry here), however POSIX is standard.

POSIX Sollution:
ereg('^{(eg|de)([a-zA-Z0-9-]+\/)+[a-zA-Z0-9-,]+.html$',} $string);

PCRE Sollution:
preg_match('/^{(eg_de)([a-zA-Z0-9]+\/)+[a-zA-Z0-9-,]+.html$/',} $string);

Actually, the two are almost exactly the same. Well that's easy then 😃

Cheers
Rob

j0sh

thank you very much 🙂 , but i get the following error:

Warning: ereg(): REG_ERANGE:invalid character range

j0sh

it seems i have to put a backslash in front of the comma, but it still does not work. 🙁 no error message, but no success.....

bubblenut

You need a slash after the eg|de bit (with a backslash before it to escape it. Thats the only other boo-boo I can spot right now.

j0sh

oh my god, i did not see the forest because of all the trees!!! 😉

thank you very much! 🙂

j0sh

ahem, not quite finished yet...

it works with string that do not contain "-", but with "-" it does not... any idea? 🙂

j0sh

strange... i'm using

	if(ereg('^(eg|de)/([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\/)+[a-zA-Z0-9\-\,]+\.html$',$modRewriteURL)) {
		echo xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
	}

and with

de/psy-world/links.html

it works, but not with

de/information/mailing-lists.html

😕

a "-" is contained in both ones?!

j0sh

by exchanging

"-" and "\," it works! 😕

'^{(eg|de)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+\/)+[a-zA-Z0-9\,-]+.html$'}

anyway thank you very much!