Utility Class to validate URL string as well as determine if the URL exists.

For extended usage examples, see test files.

Composer Ready

Available on Packagist: https://packagist.org/packages/rottingham/urlvalidator

Simply import the Urlvalidator.class.php file into your project if you are not using dependency injection.

require __DIR__ . '/src/UrlValidator.class.php';

To validate a URL string, use the UrlValidator::validate(url) method;

$url = 'http://www.yahoo.com';
$isValid = UrlValidator\UrlValidator::validate($url);
var_dump($isValid);

To determine if a URL actaully exists, IE the domain exists and the URL request is not bounced, use the UrlValidator::exists(url) method;

$url = 'http://www.yahoo.com';
$exists = UrlValidator\UrlValidator::exists($url);
var_dump($exists);

Note: UrlValidator::exists(url) calls UrlValidator::validate(url) and will return FALSE if the URL is invalid before every checking the URL headers.

You can attempt to reformat a bad URL with the UrlValidator::reformat(url) method. This method is far from perfect, but since www.yahoo.com is technically an invalid URL, it can be quite useful.

$url = 'google.com';
$newUrl = UrlValidator\UrlValidator::reformat($url);
var_dump($newUrl);

// Outputs array (size=2)
    'original' => `google.com`
    'url' => 'http://wwww.google.com'