Validating User Input as a URL Using System.URI
To make sure user input is a valid URL, you can use the System.URI type. Try to convert the raw string into this type. If it works, the string is a valid URI. You can then further examine the converted result to limit validation to only http/https URLs:
function isURI($address) { ($address -as [System.URI]).AbsoluteURI -ne $null } function isURIWeb($address) { $uri = $address -as [System.URI] $uri.AbsoluteURI -ne $null -and $uri.Scheme -match '[http|https]' } isURI('http://www.powershell.com') isURI('test') isURI($null) isURI('zzz://zumsel.zum') "-" * 50 isURIWeb('http://www.powershell.com') isURIWeb('test') isURIWeb($null) isURIWeb('zzz://zumsel.zum')