Google Chrome Plugin: How to get domain from URL (tab.url)

Question

Using the Google Chrome API tab.url value what is the best method to get just the domain from the entire value?

In JavaScript I would use 'window.location.protocol' & 'window.location.hostname'...for example something like this:

var domain = window.location.protocol + "//" + window.location.hostname;

But that gets the extension domain and not the tab so cannot use that method. So with a function similar to the one below...how would I strip just the domain from the tab.url value? Thanks in advance!

function show_alert()
 {
        chrome.tabs.getSelected(null, function(tab) {
            var currentURL = tab.url;
                        alert(currentURL);
        });

 }

Answer 1

First of all, domains don't include a protocol. I have created a regular expression for your problem. To get the hostname (you'd want to do this as IP addresses are not domains) of a URI, use the the following:

var domain = uri.match(/^[\w-]+:\/*\[?([\w\.:-]+)\]?(?::\d+)?/)[1];
// Given uri = "http://www.google.com/", domain == "www.google.com"

If you want the origin (protocol + host (not hostname, there's a difference) + optional port) instead of the domain, use the following:

var origin = uri.match(/^[\w-]+:\/*\[?([\w\.:-]+)\]?(?::\d+)?/)[0];
// Given uri = "http://www.google.com/", origin == "http://www.google.com"

Answer 2

If you are using jQuery there is a URL parsing plugin that can split provided url into pieces.