Regular expression to match DNS hostname or IP Address?
Does anyone have a regular expression handy that will match any legal DNS hostname or IP address?
It's easy to write one that works 95% of the time, but I'm hoping to get something that's well tested to exactly match the latest RFC specs for DNS hostnames.
Answer
You can use the following regular expressions separately or by combining them in a joint OR expression.
ValidIpAddressRegex = "^(([0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\.){3}([0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])$";
ValidHostnameRegex = "^(([a-zA-Z0-9]|[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9\-]*[a-zA-Z0-9])\.)*([A-Za-z0-9]|[A-Za-z0-9][A-Za-z0-9\-]*[A-Za-z0-9])$";
ValidIpAddressRegex matches valid IP addresses and ValidHostnameRegex valid host names. Depending on the language you use \ could have to be escaped with \.
ValidHostnameRegex is valid as per RFC 1123. Originally, RFC 952 specified that hostname segments could not start with a digit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname
The original specification of hostnames in RFC 952, mandated that labels could not start with a digit or with a hyphen, and must not end with a hyphen. However, a subsequent specification (RFC 1123) permitted hostname labels to start with digits.
Valid952HostnameRegex = "^(([a-zA-Z]|[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\-]*[a-zA-Z0-9])\.)*([A-Za-z]|[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9\-]*[A-Za-z0-9])$";