Create a valid URL from a String

Question

Is there any API or good function to format strings like "www.example.com" or just "example.com" to valid urlstrings like "http://www.example.com"?

+ (NSString*)complete:(NSString *)urlString
{
    NSArray * urlParts = [urlString componentsSeparatedByString:@"."];
    if(urlParts.count==3)
        return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.%@.%@",[urlParts objectAtIndex:1],[urlParts objectAtIndex:2]];
    else if(urlParts.count==2)
        return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.%@.%@",[urlParts objectAtIndex:0],[urlParts objectAtIndex:1]];
    return nil;
}

this is what current solution looks like, but this doesn't look very good and solid to me.

What you have currently is really bad. As it doesn't take into account many possibilities. You may want to look at using regex to check if you have a valid URL instead of componentsSeparatedByString. Currently your code would ig nore a string like thebestsiteintheworld.com/index.html which would be bad. — WhoaItsAFactorial
– WhoaItsAFactorial, Commented Aug 16, 2012 at 16:20

omz · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-16 16:40:59Z

4

You can do this fairly easily with NSDataDetector:

NSDataDetector *detector = [NSDataDetector dataDetectorWithTypes:NSTextCheckingTypeLink error:NULL];
NSString *URLString = @"www.example.com";
NSTextCheckingResult *result = [detector firstMatchInString:URLString options:0 range:NSMakeRange(0, URLString.length)];
if (result) {
    NSURL *URL = [result URL];
    NSLog(@"%@", URL); // http://www.example.com
}

You should not assume that www is a valid subdomain for any given domain btw.

If you need the result as a string, you can use the absoluteString method of NSURL, it's typically better to use NSURL instead of NSString for URLs though.

answered Aug 16, 2012 at 16:40

omz

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1 Comment

ChoboDev Over a year ago

Thanks a lot, this is the kind of solution i was looking for

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