How to validate domain name in PHP?

<?php
function is_valid_domain_name($domain_name)
{
    return (preg_match("/^([a-z\d](-*[a-z\d])*)(\.([a-z\d](-*[a-z\d])*))*$/i", $domain_name) //valid chars check
            && preg_match("/^.{1,253}$/", $domain_name) //overall length check
            && preg_match("/^[^\.]{1,63}(\.[^\.]{1,63})*$/", $domain_name)   ); //length of each label
}
?>

Test cases:

is_valid_domain_name? [a]                       Y
is_valid_domain_name? [0]                       Y
is_valid_domain_name? [a.b]                     Y
is_valid_domain_name? [localhost]               Y
is_valid_domain_name? [google.com]              Y
is_valid_domain_name? [news.google.co.uk]       Y
is_valid_domain_name? [xn--fsqu00a.xn--0zwm56d] Y
is_valid_domain_name? [goo gle.com]             N
is_valid_domain_name? [google..com]             N
is_valid_domain_name? [google.com ]             N
is_valid_domain_name? [google-.com]             N
is_valid_domain_name? [.google.com]             N
is_valid_domain_name? [<script]                 N
is_valid_domain_name? [alert(]                  N
is_valid_domain_name? [.]                       N
is_valid_domain_name? [..]                      N
is_valid_domain_name? [ ]                       N
is_valid_domain_name? [-]                       N
is_valid_domain_name? []                        N

With this you will not only be checking if the domain has a valid format, but also if it is active / has an IP address assigned to it.

$domain = "stackoverflow.com";

if(filter_var(gethostbyname($domain), FILTER_VALIDATE_IP))
{
    return TRUE;
}

Note that this method requires the DNS entries to be active so if you require a domain string to be validated without being in the DNS use the regular expression method given by velcrow above.

Also this function is not intended to validate a URL string use FILTER_VALIDATE_URL for that. We do not use FILTER_VALIDATE_URL for a domain because a domain string is not a valid URL.

PHP 7

// Validate a domain name
var_dump(filter_var('mandrill._domainkey.mailchimp.com', FILTER_VALIDATE_DOMAIN));
# string(33) "mandrill._domainkey.mailchimp.com"

// Validate an hostname (here, the underscore is invalid)
var_dump(filter_var('mandrill._domainkey.mailchimp.com', FILTER_VALIDATE_DOMAIN, FILTER_FLAG_HOSTNAME));
# bool(false)

It is not documented here: http://www.php.net/filter.filters.validate and a bug request for this is located here: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=72013

use checkdnsrr http://php.net/manual/en/function.checkdnsrr.php

$domain = "stackoverflow.com";

checkdnsrr($domain , "A");

//returns true if has a dns A record, false otherwise

Firstly, you should clarify whether you mean:

1. individual domain name labels
2. entire domain names (i.e. multiple dot-separate labels)
3. host names

The reason the distinction is necessary is that a label can technically include any characters, including the NUL, @ and '.' characters. DNS is 8-bit capable and it's perfectly possible to have a zone file containing an entry reading "an\0odd\.l@bel". It's not recommended of course, not least because people would have difficulty telling a dot inside a label from those separating labels, but it is legal.

However, URLs require a host name in them, and those are governed by RFCs 952 and 1123. Valid host names are a subset of domain names. Specifically only letters, digits and hyphen are allowed. Furthermore the first and last characters cannot be a hyphen. RFC 952 didn't permit a number for the first character, but RFC 1123 subsequently relaxed that.

Hence:

• a - valid
• 0 - valid
• a- - invalid
• a-b - valid
• xn--dasdkhfsd - valid (punycode encoding of an IDN)

Off the top of my head I don't think it's possible to invalidate the a- example with a single simple regexp. The best I can come up with to check a single host label is:

if (preg_match('/^[a-z\d][a-z\d-]{0,62}$/i', $label) &&
   !preg_match('/-$/', $label))
{
    # label is legal within a hostname
}

To further complicate matters, some domain name entries (typically SRV records) use labels prefixed with an underscore, e.g. _sip._udp.example.com. These are not host names, but are legal domain names.