The specified TLD has to be manual as there are no regular expression that can validate a proper domain name. You also need to take into consideration that tld these days also supports unicode too.

I feel that sort of confirms my point - maintaining this list in the back end is quite a task and it seems crazy that every installation would need to keep their own copy. I would have thought a block list of anything not allowed would make more sense, and then use something like the php FILTER_VALIDATE_URL filter (I tried and that accepted my 'problem' url as valid).

I don't really understand your point. How do you keep a list of disallowed TLD? Do you mean you want to keep a list of dictionary words in the disallowed list?

Sorry, my point is that it feels like a lot of hard work for every user of EasySocial to have to maintain the list of TLD's in the current settings considering all the new gTLD's, so I wonder if that setting has "had it's day" and perhaps could be replaced by a simple PHP check to see if a given URL is valid.

In addition perhaps a black list to block certain websites would make more sense? It may also be that some TLD'd might want to be blocked (for instance .xxx) but that could easily be done by the black list having filters such as * etc?

There is no way to verify that a domain is valid or not. For instance, hello.stackideas is a valid domain pattern but .stackideas is not a valid gTLD. There is no way to verify that it is valid.

But if you are running on an Intranet say, then it may well be that there is some valid content at hello.stackideas/image.jpg

Plus even if a domain is valid, it maybe the link isn't - someone could mistype example.com/imsge.png which is a valid URL but an invalid link.

I tried turning off the setting "Check For Valid URL Before Parsing" but if this is on or off it makes no difference, the valid URL is not accepted unless the domain is in the list (.engineering in this case), so I'm not sure really how to best allow users to post any link to any valid web address without having to add hundreds of gTLD's to this list?

I had assumed the setting "Check For Valid URL Before Parsing" would either be linked to turning on or off the use of that list or would be an additional check where it would use some method to 'ping' the given url to see if it responded, but it doesn't seem to work either way? Perhaps that's a bug?

Hi Itamar,

Perhaps you can a feature request for reversing the current TLD setting behavior to 'Unsupported Top Level Domains' so that those that are entered are the ones not allowed and the rest are allowed.

For the 'Check For Valid URL Before Parsing' setting, it appears it is not being used anywhere currently. I will log this issue in our tracker so we can address it.

For the 'Check For Valid URL Before Parsing' setting, it appears it is not being used anywhere currently. I will log this issue in our tracker so we can address it.

Great, thanks!

Okay - will put as a feature request as at the moment this 'feature' seems likely to just cause problems rather than add any useful functionality as it is currently implemented.

Hey Itamar,

'Check For Valid URL Before Parsing'

I have consulted the devs about this and the setting is indeed being used.

If you disable the setting, typing an invalid link in the story form will automatically bring you to the link tab and crawl the link(http://take.ms/KuXZN).

If you enable the setting, typing an invalid link in the story form will not add the link into the link tab(http://take.ms/pJwYB).

Interesting as I find if that setting is enabled and I type an invalid link into the story form it just accepts it and posts it
https://ibb.co/eeNH5T
https://ibb.co/cirYeo

Hey Itamar,

The setting does not prevent invalid links from being posted.

It only prevent invalid links from being transferred into the 'Link' tab and parsed there: http://take.ms/KuXZN

Okay - it really does feel like it all needs some work. This post started because someone wanted to post a valid link and EasySocial wouldn't take it. I've now set the list of allowed TLD's to be just .* and not sure if that's a supported way but it seems to allow posting of links with any domain now, rather than having to keep adding to that list, so I will keep that and see if it works okay going forward.

Hey Itamar,

Thanks for the update. Using .* should allow all tlds which is what you wanted. It is supported as the checking is being done by regex expression.

Might be worth making this the default option for future versions of ES, as having a list where every admin has to try and add in every possible domain extension (there are now over 1500 of them!) seems crazy. At present all that configuration area seems to do is allow some invalid URL's and block some valid URL's so I hope it gets a re-work at some point. Thanks!

Understood Itamar.

At present all that configuration area seems to do is allow some invalid URL's and block some valid URL's

The supported TLD setting does not check a url's validity, it only determines the TLD that a url can use.

Precisely - so what is the function of that setting? It doesn't really add any useful functionality, it just creates a nightmare for the admin who have to make sure every TLD that a user might want to post a link to is included in the list. Surely it would be better to have a system that can be set between allowing any link to be posted or set to check the validity of a link (by dns checking, pinging or something)?

Hey Itamar,

Thanks for your input. Yes I believe link sharing process can be improved, and that will be something that we'll consider in the future.

For now the expression you are using in your setting is sufficient to allow all TLDs.