# URLs Validation: Real-time Employee API

## Overview

Learn more about validation of URL formats for Real-time Employee API requests. Validation is used for the values provided in the `url` field.

## Initial validation

Initially, the validity of the URL you provided in your scraping request is verified to ensure it is a valid user profile URL. **Valid URL requirements:**

* Valid profile URLs with proper formatting
* URLs using `http://`, `https://`, or no scheme (`professional-network.com/`...)
* Percent-encoded URLs (e.g., `%C3%A9` for accented characters)
* Minimum 3 and maximum 100 characters in the profile handle

If the URL is not a user profile URL or contains an incorrect number of characters (either too many or too few), you will receive a `422` response code. **Main points of invalid URLs:**

* Profile URLs with restricted special symbols: !@#$+.&'=<>?\[]^\`{}
* URLs with leading/trailing whitespace in the profile name
* Too short (< 3 characters) or too long (> 100 characters) input
* Malformed percent encodings (e.g., `%E2%98%81%EF%B8%8F%`)
* Underscores in profile names

### Blacklist check-up

Following the initial validation, we further check if the profile is not blacklisted in our database. If the profile is blacklisted, your request will result in a `453` error.

### Nonexistent/private profiles

If you submit a nonexistent or private profile URL, the timeout response code `408` will be returned.


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.coresignal.com/employee-api/real-time-employee-api/post-request/urls-validation.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.