Social Links

Python library to validate, sanitize, and detect social media URLs. Support for LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, GitHub, Facebook, YouTube, and 65+ platforms. Features automatic URL normalization and zero dependencies. Easy to use, regex-powered, and customizable.

🚀 Try it interactively in your browser! Test the library with our Interactive Demo - no installation required.

Features

• 🔍 Auto-detect social media platforms from URLs
• ✅ Validate URLs against specific platforms
• 🧹 Sanitize URLs to canonical format
• 🆔 Extract IDs (usernames, profile IDs) from URLs
• 🎯 65+ predefined platforms (LinkedIn, GitHub, Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more)
• 🔧 Customizable - Add your own platforms with regex patterns
• 🚀 Zero dependencies - Pure Python, no external libraries

Installation

pip install social-links

Or using uv:

uv pip install social-links

Quick Start

from sociallinks import detect_platform, sanitize, extract_id, is_valid, list_platforms

# Detect platform from URL
platform = detect_platform("https://www.linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna/")
print(platform)  # "linkedin"

# Validate URL for a specific platform
is_valid_url = is_valid("linkedin", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna/")
print(is_valid_url)  # True

# Sanitize URL to canonical format
sanitized = sanitize("linkedin", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna/")
print(sanitized)  # "https://linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna"

# Extract username/ID from URL
user_id = extract_id("linkedin", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna/")
print(user_id)  # "ysskrishna"

# List all supported platforms
platforms = list_platforms()
print(f"Supported platforms: {len(platforms)}")  # Supported platforms: 65+

That's it! For most use cases, you don't need anything more. See Basic Usage for more examples, or Advanced Usage if you need custom platforms or configurations.

Supported Platforms

The library comes with 65+ predefined platforms:

Predefined Platforms
Apple Music	ArtStation	Bandcamp
Behance	Bluesky	Chess.com
CodePen	Crunchbase	Dailymotion
Dev.to	Discord	Docker Hub
Douyin	Dribbble	Etsy
Exercism	Facebook	Fiverr
Flickr	GitHub	GitLab
Gravatar	Gumroad	HackerRank
Hacker News	Hashnode	Instagram
Kaggle	Keybase	Kuaishou
LeetCode	Lemmy World	Lichess
LinkedIn (personal & company)	Linktree	Mastodon
Medium	Patreon	Pinterest
Product Hunt	PyPI	Quora
Reddit	Replit	Rumble
Signal	SlideShare	Snapchat
SoundCloud	Spotify	Stack Overflow
Steam	Substack	Telegram
Threads	TikTok	Trello
Tumblr	Twitch	Unsplash
Vimeo	VK	WeChat
Weibo	Wellfound (AngelList)	WhatsApp
WordPress	X (Twitter)	YouTube

Basic Usage

The simplest way to use social-links is with module-level functions. These work out of the box with 50+ predefined platforms - no configuration needed!

Detect Platform

from sociallinks import detect_platform

# Detect from full URL
detect_platform("https://github.com/ysskrishna")  # "github"
detect_platform("https://x.com/ysskrishna")      # "x"
detect_platform("https://example.com")           # None

# Works with various URL formats
detect_platform("http://linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna")
detect_platform("www.facebook.com/ysskrishna")
detect_platform("  https://instagram.com/ysskrishna  ")  # Handles whitespace

Validate URLs

from sociallinks import is_valid

# Validate against specific platform
is_valid("linkedin", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna/")  # True
is_valid("linkedin", "https://example.com")                   # False
is_valid("github", "https://github.com/ysskrishna")             # True

Sanitize URLs

from sociallinks import sanitize

# Normalize to canonical format
sanitize("linkedin", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna/")
# Returns: "https://linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna"

sanitize("github", "http://www.github.com/ysskrishna")
# Returns: "https://github.com/ysskrishna"

sanitize("x", "https://twitter.com/ysskrishna")
# Returns: "https://x.com/ysskrishna"

Extract IDs

from sociallinks import extract_id

# Extract username/profile ID from URL
extract_id("linkedin", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ysskrishna/")  # "ysskrishna"
extract_id("github", "https://github.com/ysskrishna")              # "ysskrishna"
extract_id("x", "https://twitter.com/ysskrishna")                  # "ysskrishna"

# Works with company/org URLs too
extract_id("linkedin", "https://linkedin.com/company/acme")  # "acme"

List Platforms

from sociallinks import list_platforms

# Get all available platforms
platforms = list_platforms()
# Returns: ["behance", "dev_to", "dribbble", "github", "linkedin", ...]
print(f"Supported platforms: {len(platforms)}")  # 50+

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Advanced Usage

For custom configurations, custom platforms, or programmatic platform management, use the SocialLinks class directly instead of the module-level functions.

When to Use Advanced Features

Use the class API when you need to:

• Add support for platforms not in the predefined list
• Customize how existing platforms are detected or sanitized
• Manage platforms programmatically (add, remove, modify)
• Configure regex flags or start with an empty platform list

Using the Class API

The SocialLinks class provides the same methods as module-level functions, but with additional configuration options:

from sociallinks import SocialLinks

sl = SocialLinks()

# Same methods as module functions
sl.detect_platform("https://github.com/ysskrishna")  # "github"
sl.is_valid("linkedin", "https://linkedin.com/in/user")  # True
sl.sanitize("github", "https://github.com/user")  # "https://github.com/user"
sl.extract_id("github", "https://github.com/user")  # "user"
sl.list_platforms()  # ["behance", "dev_to", "dribbble", ...]

Configuration Options

import re

# Start with empty platform list (useful for custom platforms only)
sl = SocialLinks(use_predefined_platforms=False)

# Configure regex compilation flags
sl = SocialLinks(regex_flags=re.IGNORECASE | re.MULTILINE)

Understanding Platform Configuration

A platform configuration is a list of dictionaries. Each dictionary contains:

• patterns: List of regex patterns that match URLs for this platform
• sanitized: Template string for the canonical URL format

Multiple dictionaries are useful when a platform has different URL types that normalize to different canonical forms (e.g., LinkedIn personal profiles /in/ vs company pages /company/).

Configuration Structure

Single dictionary - Multiple patterns sharing the same sanitization template:

platform_config = [{
    "patterns": [
        r"https?://(www\.)?example\.com/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)/?$",
        r"https?://example\.com/user/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)/?$"
    ],
    "sanitized": "https://example.com/{id}"
}]

Multiple dictionaries - Different URL formats with different sanitization templates (e.g., personal profiles vs company pages):

# Example: LinkedIn supports both personal profiles and company pages
platform_config = [
    {
        "patterns": [
            r"https?://(www\.)?linkedin\.com/in/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$",
            r"https?://linkedin\.com/mwlite/in/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$"
        ],
        "sanitized": "https://linkedin.com/in/{id}"  # Personal profiles
    },
    {
        "patterns": [
            r"https?://(www\.)?linkedin\.com/company/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$",
            r"https?://(www\.)?linkedin\.com/school/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$"
        ],
        "sanitized": "https://linkedin.com/company/{id}"  # Company/school pages
    }
]

Key Concepts

Pattern Matching:

• Use named groups like (?P<id>...) to capture identifiers (username, ID, etc.)
• For detect_platform(): All patterns are checked (order-independent)
• For sanitize(): Patterns are checked in order, and the first match is used

Sanitization Template:

• Use {id} (or other named groups from patterns) as placeholders
• This defines the canonical URL format returned by sanitize()

Adding Custom Platforms

Basic Example

from sociallinks import SocialLinks

sl = SocialLinks(use_predefined_platforms=False)

# Define a custom platform
custom_platform = [{
    "patterns": [
        r"https?://(www\.)?example\.com/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)/?$",
        r"https?://example\.com/user/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)/?$"
    ],
    "sanitized": "https://example.com/{id}"
}]

# Register the platform
sl.set_platform("example", custom_platform)

# Use it
sl.detect_platform("https://example.com/user123")  # "example"
sl.sanitize("example", "https://www.example.com/user123/")  # "https://example.com/user123"

Handling Multiple URL Formats

When a platform supports different URL formats that normalize to different canonical forms (e.g., personal profiles vs company pages):

from sociallinks import SocialLinks

sl = SocialLinks(use_predefined_platforms=False)

# Example: Platform with personal profiles and company pages
linkedin_style_platform = [
    {
        "patterns": [
            r"https?://(www\.)?example\.com/profile/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$",
            r"https?://example\.com/user/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$"
        ],
        "sanitized": "https://example.com/profile/{id}"  # Personal profiles
    },
    {
        "patterns": [
            r"https?://(www\.)?example\.com/company/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$",
            r"https?://(www\.)?example\.com/org/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$"
        ],
        "sanitized": "https://example.com/company/{id}"  # Company pages
    }
]

sl.set_platform("example", linkedin_style_platform)

# Personal profile URLs normalize to /profile/
sl.sanitize("example", "https://www.example.com/user/johndoe")  
# Returns: "https://example.com/profile/johndoe"

# Company URLs normalize to /company/
sl.sanitize("example", "https://www.example.com/org/acme-corp")  
# Returns: "https://example.com/company/acme-corp"

Managing Platforms

Viewing Platform Configurations

from sociallinks import SocialLinks

sl = SocialLinks()

# Get configuration for an existing platform
github_config = sl.get_platform("github")
print(github_config)  # See the patterns and sanitized template

# List all available platforms
platforms = sl.list_platforms()
# Returns: ["behance", "dev_to", "dribbble", "github", "linkedin", ...]

Adding Platforms

# Add a new platform (raises error if platform already exists)
custom_platform = [{
    "patterns": [r"https?://example.com/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)"],
    "sanitized": "https://example.com/{id}"
}]
sl.set_platform("example", custom_platform)

# Override an existing platform (including predefined ones)
sl.set_platform("github", custom_platform, override=True)

Adding Multiple Platforms

# Add multiple platforms at once
new_platforms = {
    "platform1": [{
        "patterns": [r"https?://example1.com/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)"],
        "sanitized": "https://example1.com/{id}"
    }],
    "platform2": [{
        "patterns": [r"https?://example2.com/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)"],
        "sanitized": "https://example2.com/{id}"
    }]
}

sl.set_platforms(new_platforms, override=False)  # Raises error if any exist
sl.set_platforms(new_platforms, override=True)   # Overrides existing platforms

Modifying Existing Platforms

# Get existing configuration
github_config = sl.get_platform("github")

# Modify and override
custom_github = [{
    "patterns": [r"https?://github\.com/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)/?$"],
    "sanitized": "https://github.com/{id}"
}]
sl.set_platform("github", custom_github, override=True)

Removing Platforms

# Delete a single platform
sl.delete_platform("custom_platform")

# Delete multiple platforms
sl.delete_platforms(["platform1", "platform2"])

# Clear all platforms
sl.clear_platforms()

Complete Example

Here's a complete example showing how to build a custom platform manager:

from sociallinks import SocialLinks

# Start with predefined platforms
sl = SocialLinks()

# Add a custom platform
my_platform = [{
    "patterns": [
        r"https?://(www\.)?mysite\.com/profile/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)/?$",
        r"https?://mysite\.com/u/(?P<id>[A-Za-z0-9_]+)/?$"
    ],
    "sanitized": "https://mysite.com/profile/{id}"
}]
sl.set_platform("mysite", my_platform)

# Use it
url = "https://www.mysite.com/u/johndoe"
platform = sl.detect_platform(url)  # "mysite"
sanitized = sl.sanitize(platform, url)  # "https://mysite.com/profile/johndoe"
user_id = sl.extract_id(platform, url)  # "johndoe"
is_valid = sl.is_valid(platform, url)  # True

# View all platforms
all_platforms = sl.list_platforms()
print(f"Total platforms: {len(all_platforms)}")

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for a detailed list of changes and version history.

Roadmap

The following improvements are planned for upcoming releases:

• Add method to configure custom sanitization patterns
• Integrate development tools (flake8, black, isort) for code quality
• Add code coverage reporting with pytest-cov
• Refactor platform entries using dataclasses for better structure

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our Contributing Guide for details on our code of conduct, development setup, and the process for submitting pull requests.

Support

If you find this library helpful:

• ⭐ Star the repository
• 🐛 Report issues
• 🔀 Submit pull requests
• 💝 Sponsor on GitHub

Credits

This package is inspired by the social-links npm package by gkucmierz.

License

MIT © Y. Siva Sai Krishna - see LICENSE file for details.

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