IS String is valid URL OR NOT

Question

I'm using .net 2010 c# windows application with this code: to check Valid Uri or not

Code:

static bool IsValidUrl(string urlString)
{
    Uri uri;
    return Uri.TryCreate(urlString, UriKind.Absolute, out uri)
        && (uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeHttp
         || uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeHttps
         || uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeFtp
         || uri.Scheme == Uri.UriSchemeMailto
         );
}

Problem: if i validate this http://http://www.Google.com i'm getting its valid but when i trying to use IE it not showing any site.

Is there any way to find out String is valid uri or not? (with out using regular expressions and internet access)

Answer 1

It's not an invalid URI or even a URI that won't ever work: You could use it in a browser somewhere where there was a local machine called "http" (or if you had your Hosts file set to call a machine that).

The problem is that the perfectly correct URI http://http://www.Google.com, which would normlly be used in the form http://http//www.Google.com, because we normlly don't include the : after the host unless we're including the port number, won't work because it fails to find a machine called "http".

Now, even if that would work sometimes, it of course wouldn't work all the time. So it's a different problem to that of the URI http://www.thisdoesnotexistbecauseijustmdeitup.com/.

If you need to also detect that case, then there really is no way other than connecting to the Internet.

If you need to detect URIs that will work globally, rather than just on particular LANs then:

static bool IsGloballyUsableWebMailorFtpUrl(string urlString)
{
  Uri uri;
  if(!Uri.TryCreate(urlString, UriKind.Absolute, out uri))
    return false;
  if(uri.Scheme != Uri.UriSchemeHttp
     && uri.Scheme != Uri.UriSchemeHttps
     && uri.Scheme != Uri.UriSchemeFtp
     && uri.Scheme != Uri.UriSchemeMailto)
     return false;
  string host = uri.Host;
  IPAddress ip;
  if(!IPAddress.TryParse(host, out ip))//if we don't have an IP address in the host part.
    return host.Contains('.') && !host.EndsWith(".local", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase); // Does the domain have at least one period
                                                   // And not the "local" binding used on many
                                                   // Private networks
  var octets = ip.GetAddressBytes();
  if(octets.Length == 4)
    switch(octets[0])//We've an IPv4 IP address, check it's not reserved.
    {
      case 0: case 10: case 127:
        return false;
      case 128: case 191:
        return octets[1] != 0;
      case 169:
        return octets[1] != 254;
      case 172:
        return octets[1] < 16 || octets[1] > 31;
      case 192:
        return octets[1] != 168 && (octets[1] != 0 || octets[2] != 0);
      case 223:
        return octets[1] != 255 && octets[2] != 255;
      default:
        return true;
    }
  else
    {  //We've an IPv6 IP address, check it's not reserved.
      if(IPAddress.HostToNetworkOrder(1) != 1)
        octets = octets.Reverse().ToArray();
      var ipInt = new BigInteger(octets);
      //Not the neatest approach, but serves
      if(ipInt < 0)
        return true;
      if(ipInt < 2)
        return false;
      if(ipInt < 281470681743360)
        return true;
      if(ipInt < 281474976710656)
        return false;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("524413980667603649783483181312245760"))
        return true;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("524413980667603649783483185607213056"))
        return false;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("42540488161975842760550356425300246528"))
        return true;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("42540488241204005274814694018844196864"))
        return false;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("42540489429626442988779757922003451904"))
        return true;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("42540490697277043217009159418706657280"))
        return false;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("42540766411282592856903984951653826560"))
        return true;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("42540766490510755371168322545197776896"))
        return false;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("42545680458834377588178886921629466624"))
        return true;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("42550872755692912415807417417958686720"))
        return false;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("334965454937798799971759379190646833152"))
        return true;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("337623910929368631717566993311207522304"))
        return false;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("338288524927261089654018896841347694592"))
        return true;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("338620831926207318622244848606417780736"))
        return false;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("338953138925153547590470800371487866880"))
        return true;
      if(ipInt < BigInteger.Parse("340282366920938463463374607431768211456"))
        return false;
      return true;
    }
}

Edit: It's worth considering whether you should do this check at all, if it's for an application that will eventually connect to the URI in question, you're just going to annoy users by refusing to connect to machines on their lan.