How to Check if URL Contains HTTP or HTTPS in Javascript
In this tutorial, you will learn how to check if URL contains HTTP or HTTPS in javascript. A URL is just a unique address of a resource on the web. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.
HTTP stands for hypertext transfer protocol. It is a standard application-level protocol used for exchanging files over the internet. HTTPS stands for hypertext transfer protocol secure. It is an extension of HTTP and is widely used to transfer encrypted HTTP data over the internet.
There are numerous ways to check if a URL contains HTTP or HTTPS. We are going to use one of the easiest solutions which involve the usage of the startsWith()
method and ternary (?
) operator.
The startsWith()
method checks whether a given string starts with a specified string or not. The ternary operator is also known as the conditional operator which acts similar to the if-else statement.
In the following example, we have one global variable and upon click of a button, we will check whether the URL contains HTTP or HTTPS and display the result on the screen. Please have a look over the code example and the steps given below.
HTML & CSS
- We have 3 elements in the HTML file (
div
,button
, andh1
). Thediv
element is just a wrapper for the rest of the elements. - The
innerText
for thebutton
element is“Check”
and for theh1
element, it is“Result”
. - We have done some basic styling using CSS and added the link to our
style.css
stylesheet inside thehead
element. - We have also included our javascript file
script.js
with ascript
tag at the bottom.
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> <title>Document</title> </head> <body> <div class="container"> <button>Check</button> <h1>Result</h1> </div> <script src="script.js"></script> </body> </html>
.container { text-align: center; } button { margin-top: 10px; padding: 10px 20px; }
Javascript
- We have selected the
button
element andh1
element using thedocument.querySelector()
method and stored them inbtnCheck
andoutput
variables respectively. - We have a global variable
myVar
which holds a https URL as its value. - We have attached a
click
event listener to thebutton
element. - In the event handler function, we are calling
getProtocol()
method and passing itmyVar
as a parameter. This method will verify whethermyVar
contains http or https. - In the
getProtocol()
method, we are usingstartsWith()
method and ternary (?
) operator as well asswitch
statement for verification. Depending upon the result of the check, this method will return"http"
,“https”
, or“Not http or https”
. - We are assigning the returned value to the
result
variable. - We are displaying the
result
in theh1
element using theinnerText
property.
let btnCheck = document.querySelector("button"); let output = document.querySelector("h1"); let myVar = "https://www.example.com/"; btnCheck.addEventListener("click", () => { let result = getProtocol(myVar) output.innerText = result; }); function getProtocol(url) { let protocol = url.startsWith("http://") ? 1 : 0; if (protocol == 0) protocol = url.startsWith("https://") ? 2 : 0; switch (protocol) { case 1: return "http"; case 2: return "https"; case 0: return "Not http or https"; } }