regular expression in python for match url - regex

Question

I need to use python to match url in my text file.
However, there is a special case:
i like 🤣pic.twitter.com/Sex8JaP5w5/a7htvq🤣
In this case I would like to keep the emoji next to the url and just match the url in the middle.
Ideally, I would like to have result like this:
i like 🤣<url>🤣
Since I am new to this, this is what I have so far.
pattern = re.compile("([:///a-zA-Z////\.])+(.com)+([:///a-zA-Z////\.])")
but the return result is something unsatisfied like this:
i like 🤣<url>Sex8JaP5w5/a7htvq🤣
Would you please help me with this? Thank you so much

Answer 1

A solution using existing packages:
from urlextract import URLExtract
import emoji
def remove_emoji(text):
return emoji.get_emoji_regexp().sub(r'', text)
extractor = URLExtract()
source = "i like 🤣pic.twitter.com/Sex8JaP5w5/a7htvq🤣 "
urlsWithEmojis = extractor.find_urls(source)
urls = list(map(remove_emoji, urlsWithEmojis))
print(urls)
output
['pic.twitter.com/Sex8JaP5w5/a7htvq']
Try it Online!
Inspired by How do you extract a url from a string using python? and removing emojis from a string in Python

Answer 2

If looks like you are missing * or+ at the last matching group so it only matches one character. So you want "([:///a-zA-Z////\.])+(.com)+([:///a-zA-Z////\.])*" or "([:///a-zA-Z////\.])+(.com)+([:///a-zA-Z////\.])+".
Now I don't know if this regex is simplified for your case, but it does not match all urls. For an example of that check out https://www.regextester.com/20
If you are attempting to match any url I would recommend rethinking your problem and trying to simplify down to more specific types of urls, like the example you provided.
EDIT: Also why (.com)+? Is there really a case where multiple ".com"s appear like .com.com.com
Also I think you have small typo and it is supposed to be (\.com). But since you have ([:///a-zA-Z////\.])+ it could be reduced to (com), however i think the explicit (\.com) makes it an easier expression to read.