Retrieve salesforce instance URL instead of visualforce instance

Question

From a Visualforce page, I need to retrieve our organization's Salesforce instance's URL and not the visual force URL.

For example, I need 

https://cs1.salesforce.com 

instead of 

https://c.cs1.visual.force.com

Here's what I've tried so far and the outcome I got:

Accessed the Site global variable from the VF Page:

<apex:outputText value="{!$Site.Domain}" />

 returns 

null

Sidenote: Everything in

 $Site.xxx 

seems to return 

null

From the Apex controller

public String getSfInstance()

{

  return ApexPages.currentPage().getHeaders().get('Host');

}

and

public String getSfInstance()

{

  return URL.getSalesforceBaseUrl().toExternalForm();

}

returns 

c.cs1.visual.force.com 

and 

https://c.cs1.visual.force.com

respectively.

Question: How do I retrieve what I want: 

https://cs1.salesforce.com ?

Answer 1

To retrieve your own organization’s Salesforce instance’s URL, and not the visual force URL, you can use this function:

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System.URL.getOrgDomainUrl().toExternalForm()

Let’s understand what this function does:

System.URL	Methods of this class can be used to create links to objects in your Org.
getOrgDomainUrl()	Regardless of the context, this method returns the same domain for your Org.
toExternalForm()	A string representation of the current URL can be returned by this method.

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