Can I improve this regex check for valid domain names?
So, I have been working on this domain name regular expression. So far, it seems to pick up domain names with SLDs and TLDs (with the optional ccTLD), but there is duplication of the TLD listing. Can this be refactored any further?
params[:domain_name].downcase.strip.match(/^[a-z0-9\-]{2,63}
\.((a[cdefgilmnoqrstuwxz]|aero|arpa)|(b[abdefghijmnorstvwyz]|biz)|
(c[acdfghiklmnorsuvxyz]|cat|com|coop)|d[ejkmoz]|(e[ceghrstu]|edu)|f[ijkmor]|
(g[abdefghilmnpqrstuwy]|gov)|h[kmnrtu]|(i[delmnoqrst]|info|int)|
(j[emop]|jobs)|k[eghimnprwyz]|l[abcikrstuvy]|
(m[acdghklmnopqrstuvwxyz]|me|mil|mobi|museum)|(n[acefgilopruz]|name|net)|(om|org)|
(p[aefghklmnrstwy]|pro)|qa|r[eouw]|s[abcdeghijklmnortvyz]|
(t[cdfghjklmnoprtvwz]|travel)|u[agkmsyz]|v[aceginu]|w[fs]|y[etu]|z[amw])
(\.((a[cdefgilmnoqrstuwxz]|aero|arpa)|(b[abdefghijmnorstvwyz]|biz)|
(c[acdfghiklmnorsuvxyz]|cat|com|coop)|d[ejkmoz]|(e[ceghrstu]|edu)|f[ijkmor]|
(g[abdefghilmnpqrstuwy]|gov)|h[kmnrtu]|(i[delmnoqrst]|info|int)|
(j[emop]|jobs)|k[eghimnprwyz]|l[abcikrstuvy]|
m[acdghklmnopqrstuvwxyz]|mil|mobi|museum)|
(n[acefgilopruz]|name|net)|(om|org)|
(p[aefghklmnrstwy]|pro)|qa|r[eouw]|s[abcdeghijklmnortvyz]|
(t[cdfghjklmnoprtvwz]|travel)|u[agkmsyz]|v[aceginu]|w[fs]|y[etu]|z[amw]))?$/)
Answer
Please, please, please don't use a fixed and horribly complicated regex like this to match for known domain names.
The list of TLDs is not static, particularly with ICANN looking at a streamlined process for new gTLDs. Even the list of ccTLDs changes sometimes!
Have a look at the list available from http://publicsuffix.org/ and write some code that's able to download and parse that list instead.