URL parsing and manipulation in .NET

July 7th 2006 • .NET (ASP.NET, uri, url) • 7,696 views • 16 responses

While .NET has a URI class it’s not great. They don’t expose the various parts as properties and you can’t manipulate them either. Many projects I’ve seen (Subtext included) just try and manipulate them via strings which varying degrees of success.

Here’s a C# .NET URL decoder that uses a regular expression I developed for performance based on a VBScript class I developed a while back. Comments and white space have been removed to keep it short.

using System;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public class URL : ICloneable, IComparable
{
    private const string schemeDecodeRegex = @"([^:]+):";
    private const string mailtoDecodeRegex = @"(mailto:)(([^@]+)@(.+))";
    private const string urlDecodeRegex = @"([^:]+)://(([^:@]+)(:([^@]+))?@)?([^:/?#]+)(:([d]+))?([^?#]+)?(\?([^#]+))?(#(.*))?";
    private URL baseUrl;
    private string scheme;
    private long port;
    private bool useDefaultPort;
    private string hostName;
    private string user;
    private string password;
    private string path;
    private NameValueCollection query;
    private string fragment;
    private bool relative;

    public URL() {
        Reset();
    }

    public URL(string url) {
        Reset();
        FullURL = url;
    }

    public URL(URL copyUrl) {
        Reset();
        CopyFrom(copyUrl);
    }

    public string Scheme {
        get { return scheme; }
        set { scheme = value.Trim(); }
    }

    public long Port {
        get { return port; }
        set { port = value;
              useDefaultPort = false; }
    }

    public bool UseDefaultPort {
        get { return useDefaultPort; }
        set { useDefaultPort = value; }
    }

    public string User {
        get { return user; }
        set { user = value; }
    }

    public string Password {
        get { return password; }
        set { password = value; }
    }

    public string HostName {
        get { return hostName; }
        set { hostName = value; }
    }

    public string Path {
        get { return path; }
        set { path = value; }
    }

    public NameValueCollection Query {
        get { return query; }
        set { query = value; }
    }

    public string Fragment {
        get { return fragment; }
        set { fragment = value; }
    }

    public string FullURL {
        get {
            if (Scheme.Equals("mailto"))
                return string.Format("{0}:{1}@{2}", Scheme, User, HostName);
            string newURL = string.Empty;
            if (!Relative) {
                newURL += Scheme + "://";
                if (User.Length > 0) {
                    newURL += User;
                    if (Password.Length > 0)
                        newURL += ":" + Password;
                    newURL += "@";
                }
                newURL += HostName;
                if (!UseDefaultPort)
                    newURL += ":" + Port;
            }
            newURL += Path;
            if (QueryString.Length > 0)
                newURL += "?" + QueryString;
            if (Fragment.Length > 0)
                newURL += "#" + Fragment;
            return newURL;
        }
        set {
            Reset();
            Match m = new Regex(schemeDecodeRegex).Match(value);
            if (m.Success)
                if (m.Groups[1].Captures[0].Value.ToLower().Equals("mailto"))
                    DecodeMailTo(value);
                else
                    DecodeURL(value);
        }
    }

    public bool Relative {
        get { return relative; }
        set { relative = value; }
    }

    public string QueryString {
        get {
            string newQueryString = string.Empty;
            for (int queryIdx = 0; queryIdx < Query.Count; queryIdx++) {
                newQueryString += (queryIdx == 0 ? "" : "&") + Query.Keys[queryIdx];
                if (Query[queryIdx].Length > 0)
                    newQueryString += "=" + Query[queryIdx];
            }
            return newQueryString;
        }
        set {
            Query.Clear();
            AppendQueryString(value);
        }
    }

    public URL BaseUrl {
        get { return baseUrl; }
        set { baseUrl = value; }
    }

    public void AppendQueryString(string newQueryString) {
        string[] pairs = newQueryString.Split('&');
        for (int pairIdx = 0; pairIdx < pairs.Length; pairIdx++) {
            string pair = pairs[pairIdx];
            int keyPos = pair.IndexOf('=');
            if (keyPos > 0) {
                string key = pair.Substring(0, keyPos);
                string value = pair.Substring(keyPos + 1);
                query[key] = value;
            }
            else
                query[pair] = string.Empty;
        }
    }

    public void Reset() {
        Scheme = string.Empty;
        Port = 0;
        UseDefaultPort = true;
        HostName = string.Empty;
        User = string.Empty;
        Password = string.Empty;
        Path = string.Empty;
        Query = new NameValueCollection();
        Fragment = string.Empty;
        Relative = false;
    }

    public void CopyFrom(URL copyUrl) {
        Scheme = copyUrl.Scheme;
        User = copyUrl.User;
        Password = copyUrl.Password;
        HostName = copyUrl.HostName;
    }

    public override bool Equals(object obj) {
        if (obj == null) return false;
        if (obj.GetType() != this.GetType()) return false;
        return (FullURL == ((URL) obj).FullURL);
    }

    public override int GetHashCode() {
        return FullURL.GetHashCode();
    }

    public override string ToString() {
        return FullURL;
    }

    private void DecodeURL(string value) {
        Match m = new Regex(urlDecodeRegex).Match(value);
        if (m.Success) {
            if (m.Groups[1].Captures.Count == 1)
                Scheme = m.Groups[1].Captures[0].Value;
            if (m.Groups[4].Captures.Count == 1)
                User = m.Groups[4].Captures[0].Value;
            if (m.Groups[5].Captures.Count == 1)
                Password = m.Groups[5].Captures[0].Value;
            if (m.Groups[6].Captures.Count == 1)
                HostName = m.Groups[6].Captures[0].Value;
            if (m.Groups[8].Captures.Count == 1)
                Port = Int32.Parse(m.Groups[8].Captures[0].Value);
            if (m.Groups[9].Captures.Count == 1)
                Path = m.Groups[9].Captures[0].Value;
            if (m.Groups[11].Captures.Count == 1)
                QueryString = m.Groups[11].Captures[0].Value;
            if (m.Groups[13].Captures.Count == 1)
                Fragment = m.Groups[13].Captures[0].Value;
        }
    }

    private void DecodeMailTo(string value) {
        Match m = new Regex(mailtoDecodeRegex).Match(value);
        if (m.Success) {
            if (m.Groups[1].Captures.Count == 1)
                Scheme = m.Groups[1].Captures[0].Value;
            if (m.Groups[2].Captures.Count == 1)
                User = m.Groups[2].Captures[0].Value;
            if (m.Groups[3].Captures.Count == 1)
                HostName = m.Groups[3].Captures[0].Value;
        }
    }

    public object Clone() {
        URL newClone = (URL) this.MemberwiseClone();
        newClone.Query = new NameValueCollection(Query);
        return newClone;
    }

    public int CompareTo(object obj) {
        if (obj == this) return 0;
        if (!(obj is URL)) return -1;
        return ((URL) obj).FullURL.CompareTo(FullURL);
    }
}

[)amien