Should "http://" be stored with a database record of a URL?

Question

There are a number of fields a user can fill in where they'd enter a URL (their personal website, business site, favorite sites, etc etc).

It's the only thing they'd be entering in that particular field.

So should I always strip out "http://" to keep it consistent and to also reduce the possibility of broken links (ie. "http//")?

Just not sure what the best way to store URLs is.

Answer 1

If there's a reason to sanitize your users' input (security, size, speed, accuracy...) then do it.

But otherwise, don't.

There's actually a benefit a lot of times in taking your customer-input data as-is. They own their own typos or misspellings, broken links, etc. that way. As long as it doesn't cause a problem for you (i.e. you don't have a reason to sanitize it).

BTW -- consistency is a moot point, as it won't change the data type, and you can easily check for the "http://" and add or remove it as necessary in your presentation layers with a re-usable function.

Answer 2

As far as I know you actually can not call it an "URL", without having the protocol part:

http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.txt

I wouldn't remove it.

However if you really need to keep the data consistent, it really depends how the URL is actually typed in your application. If it's a browser-like application, I'd bet it can be assumed to be http:// in front if there is none, for valid links.