<input type="url">

<input> elements of type url are used to let the user enter and edit a URL.

The input value is automatically validated to ensure that it's either empty or a properly-formatted URL before the form can be submitted. The :valid and :invalid CSS pseudo-classes are automatically applied as appropriate to visually denote whether the current value of the field is a valid URL or not.

On browsers that don't support inputs of type url, a url input falls back to being a standard text input.

Value

The <input> element's value attribute contains a DOMString which is automatically validated as conforming to URL syntax. More specifically, there are three possible value formats that will pass validation:

1. An empty string ("") indicating that the user did not enter a value or that the value was removed.
2. A single properly-formed absolute URL. This doesn't necessarily mean the URL address exists, but it is at least formatted correctly. In simple terms, this means urlscheme://restofurl.
3. A single properly-formed relative URL.

See Validation for details on how URLs are validated to ensure that they're formatted properly.

Additional attributes

In addition to the attributes that operate on all <input> elements regardless of their type, url inputs support the following attributes:

maxlength

The maximum number of characters (as UTF-16 code units) the user can enter into the url input. This must be an integer value 0 or higher. If no maxlength is specified, or an invalid value is specified, the url input has no maximum length. This value must also be greater than or equal to the value of minlength.

The input will fail constraint validation if the length of the text value of the field is greater than maxlength UTF-16 code units long. Constraint validation is only applied when the value is changed by the user.

minlength

The minimum number of characters (as UTF-16 code units) the user can enter into the url input. This must be an non-negative integer value smaller than or equal to the value specified by maxlength. If no minlength is specified, or an invalid value is specified, the url input has no minimum length.

The input will fail constraint validation if the length of the text entered into the field is fewer than minlength UTF-16 code units long. Constraint validation is only applied when the value is changed by the user.

pattern

The pattern attribute, when specified, is a regular expression that the input's value must match in order for the value to pass constraint validation. It must be a valid JavaScript regular expression, as used by the RegExp type, and as documented in our guide on regular expressions; the 'u' flag is specified when compiling the regular expression, so that the pattern is treated as a sequence of Unicode code points, instead of as ASCII. No forward slashes should be specified around the pattern text.

If the specified pattern is not specified or is invalid, no regular expression is applied and this attribute is ignored completely.

See the section Pattern validation for details and an example.

placeholder

The placeholder attribute is a string that provides a brief hint to the user as to what kind of information is expected in the field. It should be a word or short phrase that demonstrates the expected type of data, rather than an explanatory message. The text must not include carriage returns or line feeds.

If the control's content has one directionality (LTR or RTL) but needs to present the placeholder in the opposite directionality, you can use Unicode bidirectional algorithm formatting characters to override directionality within the placeholder; see Overriding BiDi using Unicode control characters in The Unicode Bidirectional Text Algorithm for those characters.

readonly

A Boolean attribute which, if present, means this field cannot be edited by the user. Its value can, however, still be changed by JavaScript code directly setting the HTMLInputElement.value property.

size

The size attribute is a numeric value indicating how many characters wide the input field should be. The value must be a number greater than zero, and the default value is 20. Since character widths vary, this may or may not be exact and should not be relied upon to be so; the resulting input may be narrower or wider than the specified number of characters, depending on the characters and the font (font settings in use).

This does not set a limit on how many characters the user can enter into the field. It only specifies approximately how many can be seen at a time. To set an upper limit on the length of the input data, use the maxlength attribute.

spellcheck

spellcheck is a global attribute which is used to indicate whether or not to enable spell checking for an element. It can be used on any editable content, but here we consider specifics related to the use of spellcheck on <input> elements. The permitted values for spellcheck are:

false

Disable spell checking for this element.

true

Enable spell checking for this element.

"" (empty string) or no value

Follow the element's default behavior for spell checking. This may be based upon a parent's spellcheck setting or other factors.

An input field can have spell checking enabled if it doesn't have the readonly attribute set and is not disabled.

The value returned by reading spellcheck may not reflect the actual state of spell checking within a control, if the user agent's preferences override the setting.

Non-standard attributes

The following non-standard attributes are also available on some browsers. As a general rule, you should avoid using them unless it can't be helped.

autocorrect

A Safari extension, the autocorrect attribute is a string which indicates whether or not to activate automatic correction while the user is editing this field. Permitted values are:

on

Enable automatic correction of typos, as well as processing of text substitutions if any are configured.

off

Disable automatic correction and text substitutions.

mozactionhint

A Mozilla extension, supported by Firefox for Android, which provides a hint as to what sort of action will be taken if the user presses the Enter or Return key while editing the field. This information is used to decide what kind of label to use on the Enter key on the virtual keyboard.

Permitted values are: go, done, next, search, and send. The browser decides, using this hint, what label to put on the enter key.

Using URL inputs

When you create a URL input with the proper type value, url, you get automatic validation that the entered text is at least in the correct form to potentially be a legitimate URL. This can help avoid cases in which the user mis-types their web site's address, or provides an invalid one.

It's important, however, to note that this is not enough to ensure that the specified text is a URL which actually exists, corresponds to the user of the site, or is acceptable in any other way. It simply ensures that the value of the field is properly formatted to be a URL.

A simple URL input

Currently, all browsers which implement this element implement it as a standard text input field with basic validation features. In its most basic form, a URL input can be implemented like this:

<input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url">

Notice that it's considered valid when empty and when a single validly-formatted URL address is entered, but is otherwise not considered valid. By adding the required attribute, only properly-formed URLs are allowed; the input is no longer considered valid when empty.

There is nothing magical going on here. Submitting this form would cause the following data to be sent to the server: myURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com. Note how characters are escaped as necessary.

Placeholders

Sometimes it's helpful to offer an in-context hint as to what form the input data should take. This can be especially important if the page design doesn't offer descriptive labels for each <input>. This is where placeholders come in. A placeholder is a value that demonstrates the form the value should take by presenting an example of a valid value, which is displayed inside the edit box when the element's value is "". Once data is entered into the box, the placeholder disappears; if the box is emptied, the placeholder reappears.

Here, we have a url input with the placeholder http://www.example.com. Note how the placeholder disappears and reappears as you manipulate the contents of the edit field.

<input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url"
       placeholder="http://www.example.com">

Controlling the input size

You can control not only the physical length of the input box, but also the minimum and maximum lengths allowed for the input text itself.

Physical input element size

The physical size of the input box can be controlled using the size attribute. With it, you can specify the number of characters the input box can display at a time. In this example, for instance, the url edit box is 30 characters wide:

<input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url"
       size="30">

Element value length

The size is separate from the length limitation on the entered URL itself. You can specify a minimum length, in characters, for the entered URL using the minlength attribute; similarly, use maxlength to set the maximum length of the entered URL. If maxLength exceeds size, the input box's contents will scroll as needed to show the current selection or insertion point as the content is manipulated.

The example below creates a 30-character wide URL address entry box, requiring that the contents be no shorter than 10 characters and no longer than 80 characters.

<input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url"
       size="30" minlength="10" maxlength="80">

Providing default options

As always, you can provide a default value for a url input box by setting its value attribute:

<input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url"
       value="http://www.example.com">

Offering suggested values

Taking it a step farther, you can provide a list of default options from which the user can select by specifying the list attribute. This doesn't limit the user to those options, but does allow them to select commonly-used URLs more quickly. This also offers hints to autocomplete. The list attribute specifies the ID of a <datalist>, which in turn contains one <option> element per suggested value; each option's value is the corresponding suggested value for the URL entry box.

<input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url"
       list="defaultURLs">

<datalist id="defaultURLs">
  <option value="https://developer.mozilla.org/">
  <option value="http://www.google.com/">
  <option value="http://www.microsoft.com/">
  <option value="https://www.mozilla.org/">
  <option value="http://w3.org/">
</datalist>

With the <datalist> element and its <option>s in place, the browser will offer the specified values as potential values for the URL; this is typically presented as a popup or drop-down menu containing the suggestions. While the specific user experience may vary from one browser to another, typically clicking in the edit box presents a drop-down of the suggested URLs. Then, as the user types, the list is adjusted to show only matching values. Each typed character narrows down the list until the user makes a selection or types a custom value.

Using labels for suggested values

You can opt to include the label attribute on one or all of your <option> elements to provide textual labels. Some browsers may display only the labels, while others may display both the label and the URL.

<input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url"
       list="defaultURLs">

<datalist id="defaultURLs">
  <option value="https://developer.mozilla.org/" label="MDN Web Docs">
  <option value="http://www.google.com/" label="Google">
  <option value="http://www.microsoft.com/" label="Microsoft">
  <option value="https://www.mozilla.org/" label="Mozilla">
  <option value="http://w3.org/" label="W3C">
</datalist>

Validation

There are two levels of content validation available for url inputs. First, there's the standard level of validation offered to all <input>s, which automatically ensures that the contents meet the requirements to be a valid URL. But there's also the option to add additional filtering to ensure that your own specialized needs are met, if you have any.

Basic validation

Browsers that support the url input type automatically provide validation to ensure that only text that matches the standard format for URLs is entered into the input box.

The syntax of a URL is fairly intricate. It's defined by WHATWG's URL Living Standard and is described for newcomers in our article What is a URL?

Making a URL required

As mentioned earlier, to make a URL entry required before the form can be submitted (you can't leave the field blank), you just need to include the required attribute on the input.

<form>
  <input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url" required>
  <button>Submit</button>
</form>

Try submitting the above form with no value entered to see what happens.

Pattern validation

If you need the entered URL to be restricted further than just "any string that looks like a URL," you can use the pattern attribute to specify a regular expression the value must match for the value to be valid.

For example, let's say you're building a support page for employees of Myco, Inc. which will let them contact their IT department for help if one of their pages has a problem. In our simplified form, the user needs to enter the URL of the page that has a problem, and a message describing what is wrong. But we want the URL to only successfully validate if the entered URL is in a Myco domain.

Since inputs of type url validate against both the standard URL validation and the specified pattern, you can implement this easily. Let's see how:

<form>
  <div>
    <label for="myURL">Enter the problem website address:</label>
    <input id="myURL" name="myURL" type="url"
           required pattern=".*\.myco\..*"
           title="The URL must be in a Myco domain">
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </div>
  <div>
    <label for="myComment">What is the problem?</label>
    <input id="myComment" name="myComment" type="text"
           required>
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </div>
  <div>
    <button>Submit</button>
  </div>
</form>

First of all, the required attribute is specified, making it mandatory that a valid email address be provided.

Second, in the url input we set pattern to ".*\.myco\..*". This simple regular expression requests a string that has any number of characters, followed by a dot, followed by "myco", followed by a dot, followed by any number of characters. And because the browser runs both the standard URL filter and our custom pattern against the specified text, we wind up with a validation which says "make sure this is a valid URL, and also in a Myco domain."

This isn't perfect, but it is good enough for this simple demo's requirements.

It's advisable to use the title attribute along with pattern. If you do, the title must describe the pattern; it should explain what format the data should take on, rather than any other information. That's because the title may be displayed or spoken as part of a validation error message. For example, the browser might present the message "The entered text doesn't match the required pattern." followed by your specified title. If your title is something like "URL", the result would be the message "The entered text doesn't match the required pattern. URL", which is not a good user experience.

That's why, instead, we specify the string "The URL must be in a myco domain". By doing that, the resulting full error message might be something like "The entered text doesn't match the required pattern. The URL should be in a myco domain."

Examples

There's not much else to say about url type inputs; check the Pattern validation and Using URL inputs sections for numerous examples.

You can also find our pattern validation example on GitHub (see it running live also).

Specifications

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub

See also

• HTML forms guide
• <input>
• <input type="tel">
• <input type="email">