You've Got Mail (But It's Actually a Domain Name, Not Your Aunt Mildred's Fruitcake Recipe)
Ah, the elusive domain name. It's the internet's equivalent of that cool nickname you desperately wanted in elementary school, but somehow ended up with "Stinky Steve" instead. Fear not, fellow programmers, for within the depths of the HttpServletRequest
object lies the key to unlocking this digital treasure!
How To Get Domain From Httpservletrequest |
Mission: Extract the Domain (Without Getting Lost in Server Name Soup)
First things first, forget about the "http" or "https" – we're after the real estate that follows those colons. This is where our good friend request.getServerName()
swoops in. It returns a string containing the entire server name, which might include things like subdomains. But hey, we're not here to settle for the whole address – we just want the cool street name (or domain name, in this case).
Warning! Just like your friend who always ends up at the wrong party, request.getServerName()
can sometimes be fooled by proxy servers. These guys act as middlemen between your server and the wild world of the internet. If a proxy is involved, getServerName()
might return the proxy's domain instead of your own. But don't worry, we have a secret weapon...
Tip: Read once for flow, once for detail.![]()
Introducing the Regex Regular Rescue Squad (Or How to Not Confuse Subdomains with the Main Domain)
Regular expressions, often shortened to regex, are the ultimate code cowboys. They can wrangle wild strings like nobody's business. In our case, we can use a regex to identify and discard any subdomains, leaving us with the pure, unadulterated domain name.
Here's a regex pattern that'll do the trick: .*\\.(?=.*\\..*\\.)
(Don't worry, you don't need a decoder ring to understand this. Just trust us, it works like a charm).
Tip: Don’t skip — flow matters.![]()
How it works (in layman's terms): This fancy code basically says: "Hey, find any dot (.) followed by anything, but make sure that anything is followed by another dot and then anything else. Basically, discard anything before the second-to-last dot."
By replacing the matched part with an empty string, we're left with just the domain name itself. Voila!
QuickTip: Skim slowly, read deeply.![]()
Bonus Tip: If you only want to remove the first subdomain (e.g., get "[invalid URL removed]" instead of "www.google.com"), you can use a simpler regex like ^[^\. ]*\.(.*)$
.
Putting it All Together (Because Nobody Likes a Cliffhanger)
Here's a quick code snippet to illustrate the whole process:
Tip: Compare what you read here with other sources.![]()
String domainName = request.getServerName().replaceAll(".*\\.(?=.*\\..*\\.)", "");
This code retrieves the server name from the request, then uses the magic of regex to extract the domain name. Now you have the domain name safely tucked away in your code, ready to use for whatever nefarious or noble purpose you see fit.
Remember: Great power comes with great responsibility. Use your newfound domain-name-extracting skills wisely!