regex - What's the cleanest way to extract URLs from a string using Python?

Question

Although I know I could use some hugeass regex such as the one posted here I'm wondering if there is some tweaky as hell way to do this either with a standard module or perhaps some third-party add-on?

Simple question, but nothing jumped out on Google (or Stackoverflow).

Look forward to seeing how y'all do this!

Answer 1

I know that it's exactly what you do not want but here's a file with a huge regex:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
the web url matching regex used by markdown
http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matching_urls
https://gist.github.com/gruber/8891611
"""
URL_REGEX = r"""(?i)((?:https?:(?:/{1,3}|[a-z0-9%])|[a-z0-9.-]+[.](?:com|net|org|edu|gov|mil|aero|asia|biz|cat|coop|info|int|jobs|mobi|museum|name|post|pro|tel|travel|xxx|ac|ad|ae|af|ag|ai|al|am|an|ao|aq|ar|as|at|au|aw|ax|az|ba|bb|bd|be|bf|bg|bh|bi|bj|bm|bn|bo|br|bs|bt|bv|bw|by|bz|ca|cc|cd|cf|cg|ch|ci|ck|cl|cm|cn|co|cr|cs|cu|cv|cx|cy|cz|dd|de|dj|dk|dm|do|dz|ec|ee|eg|eh|er|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fk|fm|fo|fr|ga|gb|gd|ge|gf|gg|gh|gi|gl|gm|gn|gp|gq|gr|gs|gt|gu|gw|gy|hk|hm|hn|hr|ht|hu|id|ie|il|im|in|io|iq|ir|is|it|je|jm|jo|jp|ke|kg|kh|ki|km|kn|kp|kr|kw|ky|kz|la|lb|lc|li|lk|lr|ls|lt|lu|lv|ly|ma|mc|md|me|mg|mh|mk|ml|mm|mn|mo|mp|mq|mr|ms|mt|mu|mv|mw|mx|my|mz|na|nc|ne|nf|ng|ni|nl|no|np|nr|nu|nz|om|pa|pe|pf|pg|ph|pk|pl|pm|pn|pr|ps|pt|pw|py|qa|re|ro|rs|ru|rw|sa|sb|sc|sd|se|sg|sh|si|sj|Ja|sk|sl|sm|sn|so|sr|ss|st|su|sv|sx|sy|sz|tc|td|tf|tg|th|tj|tk|tl|tm|tn|to|tp|tr|tt|tv|tw|tz|ua|ug|uk|us|uy|uz|va|vc|ve|vg|vi|vn|vu|wf|ws|ye|yt|yu|za|zm|zw)/)(?:[^s()<>{}[]]+|([^s()]*?([^s()]+)[^s()]*?)|([^s]+?))+(?:([^s()]*?([^s()]+)[^s()]*?)|([^s]+?)|[^s`!()[]{};:'".,<>???“”‘’])|(?:(?<!@)[a-z0-9]+(?:[.-][a-z0-9]+)*[.](?:com|net|org|edu|gov|mil|aero|asia|biz|cat|coop|info|int|jobs|mobi|museum|name|post|pro|tel|travel|xxx|ac|ad|ae|af|ag|ai|al|am|an|ao|aq|ar|as|at|au|aw|ax|az|ba|bb|bd|be|bf|bg|bh|bi|bj|bm|bn|bo|br|bs|bt|bv|bw|by|bz|ca|cc|cd|cf|cg|ch|ci|ck|cl|cm|cn|co|cr|cs|cu|cv|cx|cy|cz|dd|de|dj|dk|dm|do|dz|ec|ee|eg|eh|er|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fk|fm|fo|fr|ga|gb|gd|ge|gf|gg|gh|gi|gl|gm|gn|gp|gq|gr|gs|gt|gu|gw|gy|hk|hm|hn|hr|ht|hu|id|ie|il|im|in|io|iq|ir|is|it|je|jm|jo|jp|ke|kg|kh|ki|km|kn|kp|kr|kw|ky|kz|la|lb|lc|li|lk|lr|ls|lt|lu|lv|ly|ma|mc|md|me|mg|mh|mk|ml|mm|mn|mo|mp|mq|mr|ms|mt|mu|mv|mw|mx|my|mz|na|nc|ne|nf|ng|ni|nl|no|np|nr|nu|nz|om|pa|pe|pf|pg|ph|pk|pl|pm|pn|pr|ps|pt|pw|py|qa|re|ro|rs|ru|rw|sa|sb|sc|sd|se|sg|sh|si|sj|Ja|sk|sl|sm|sn|so|sr|ss|st|su|sv|sx|sy|sz|tc|td|tf|tg|th|tj|tk|tl|tm|tn|to|tp|tr|tt|tv|tw|tz|ua|ug|uk|us|uy|uz|va|vc|ve|vg|vi|vn|vu|wf|ws|ye|yt|yu|za|zm|zw)/?(?!@)))"""

I call that file urlmarker.py and when I need it I just import it, eg.

import urlmarker
import re
re.findall(urlmarker.URL_REGEX,'some text news.yahoo.com more text')

cf. http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matching_urls

Also, here is what Django (1.6) uses to validate URLFields:

regex = re.compile(
    r'^(?:http|ftp)s?://'  # http:// or https://
    r'(?:(?:[A-Z0-9](?:[A-Z0-9-]{0,61}[A-Z0-9])?.)+(?:[A-Z]{2,6}.?|[A-Z0-9-]{2,}.?)|'  # domain...
    r'localhost|'  # localhost...
    r'd{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3}|'  # ...or ipv4
    r'[?[A-F0-9]*:[A-F0-9:]+]?)'  # ...or ipv6
    r'(?::d+)?'  # optional port
    r'(?:/?|[/?]S+)$', re.IGNORECASE)

cf. https://github.com/django/django/blob/1.6/django/core/validators.py#L43-50

Django 1.9 has that logic split across a few classes