PHP Forms Validate URL

Last Updated : 24 Apr, 2025
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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

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";
}
?>

Output
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";
}
?>

Output
https://www.example.in is a VALID URL

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PHP | realpath( ) Function

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