Validate URL in PHP without regex

In PHP we have had a default URL validation like this:

// truthy if we have valid URL
filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL);

But this approach would fail for working URLs with utf-8 symbols. Consider this website: http://www.medizinische-übersetzungen.biz/

Validation of the example from above will fail because `filter_var` implementation is not aware of multibyte encodings.

A safer approach to validate URL you’re receiving from users:

// truthy if we have valid URL
parse_url($url, PHP_URL_SCHEME) && parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST);

There is a drawback in the suggested solution: parse_urlwon’t catch strange characters in URL:

input: http://www.ex=ample.com
filter_var: FAIL
parse_url: PASS  // the only failure of suggested solution

But from experience, I usually see a missing schema or completely invalid values in the form field, this solution is good enough.

Check test cases in https://github.com/terales/php-url-validation-example

image for preview only