Censornet - internet filtering on your terms

URL Patterns Explained

July 19, 2011 • Customer Services       

Synopsis

Article

CensorNet has various modules that allow you to add in your own URL patterns to allow, block or bypass. The modules are Custom URL and Filter Bypass respectively.

CensorNet uses its own interpretation of patterns in order to match URL's. It does not use standard regular expressions.

The following examples show how the patterns can be made up. With the exception of the Filter Bypass, which will always allow the matched URL, whether or not the matched URL is blocked or allowed is determined by how the category is configured in the active policy.

Examples

To match the keyword 'game' in the DOMAIN and the PATH:-

game*/*game

This would match http://www.gamespot.com/sections/games/index.html but it would not match http://www.gamespot.com or http://www.bbc.co.uk/games.

To match the keyword 'game' in either the DOMAIN or the PATH:-

Requires 2 patterns:-

game*
/*game

This would match http://www.gamespot.com or http://www.nick.com/games/ or http://www.stuff.com/online/games/flash

To match the keyword 'game' only if it appears in a path:-

/*game

You can also use PORT numbers

games*:443/*game - matches https://www.gamespot.com/online/games/flash/

Dangerous Patterns

Watch out for these patterns as they can cause unwanted effects:-

/

This matches everything!

:443

This matches all HTTPS / SSL web sites!

Incorrect patterns

The following patterns are incorrect:-

*game*

This will try and match 'http://*game...' in the DOMAIN, which is invalid for a domain

game/*game*

This will try and match 'game*' anywhere in the PATH, e.g http://www.games.com/game*/flash/

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