Regex to check if http or https exists in the string

Question

So i have this code:

function validateText(str)
{
    var tarea = str;
    var tarea_regex = /^(http|https)/;
    if(tarea_regex.test(String(tarea).toLowerCase()) == true)
    {
        $('#textVal').val('');
    }
}

This works perfectly for this:

https://hello.com
http://hello.com

but not for:

this is a website http://hello.com asdasd asdasdas

tried doing some reading but i dont where to place * ? since they will check the expression anywhere on the string according here -> http://www.regular-expressions.info/reference.html

thank you

Answer 1

From the looks of it, you're just checking if http or https exists in the string. Regular expressions are a bit overkill for that purpose. Try this simple code using indexOf:

function validateText(str)
{
    var tarea = str;
    if (tarea.indexOf("http://") == 0 || tarea.indexOf("https://") == 0) {
        // do something here
    }
}

Answer 2

Try this:

function validateText(string) {
  if(/(http(s?)):\/\//i.test(string)) {
    // do something here
  }
}