Regular Expression validation issue using SimpleConstraint

asked 2012-01-28 22:20:17 +0800

I have a textbox field where a user should enter an e-mail address. I want to validate the input. If I add a constraint within the XML (.zul) file, the validation works fine. If I create an instance of a SimpleConstraint and call email.setConstraint(SimpleCnstraint) it does not work (no matter what the user enters, the field is considered invalid and they get a message). Below are both the working example done within the zul file and the example done in code that I cannot get to work:

This works:

<textbox id="email" width="300px" constraint="no empty, /^[0-9a-zA-Z]+([0-9a-zA-Z]*[-._+])*[0-9a-zA-Z]+@[0-9a-zA-Z]+([-.][0-9a-zA-Z]+)*([0-9a-zA-Z]*[.]){2,6}$/: Please enter a valid e-mail address."/>

This does NOT work:

String emailValidation = "/^[0-9a-zA-Z]+([0-9a-zA-Z]*[-._+])*[0-9a-zA-Z]+@[0-9a-zA-Z]+([-.][0-9a-zA-Z]+)*([0-9a-zA-Z]*[.]){2,6}$/";
SimpleConstraint emailConstraint = new SimpleConstraint(emailValidation, "Please enter a valid e-mail address.");
email.setConstraint(emailConstraint);

I've tried removing the leading and trailing "/" in the regular expression String used in the java code and still had no luck. The java code was located in the doFinally() method of the genericforwardcomposer.

any ideas?

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9 Replies

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answered 2012-05-16 01:39:29 +0800

samchuang
4084 ● 4

hi here is my test, it works fine

<zk>
<window apply="test.ConstraintTest">
	<textbox id="email" width="300px" constraint="/^\w+@+?\.{2,3}$/"/>
	<textbox id="email2" width="300px"/>
</window>
</zk>

public class ConstraintTest extends SelectorComposer<Window> {

	@Wire
	Textbox email;
	@Wire
	Textbox email2;
	
	@Override
	public void doAfterCompose(Window comp) throws Exception {
		super.doAfterCompose(comp);
		
		email2.setConstraint(new SimpleConstraint("/^\\w+@+?\\.{2,3}$/"));
	}
}

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answered 2012-05-30 19:24:36 +0800

eclement
21

Agreed, it works fine when the regular expression is short, but when it's very long as in my example, it does not.

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answered 2012-05-31 00:40:03 +0800

samchuang
4084 ● 4

that's strange, by the way, what do I need to type to pass your constraint ?

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answered 2012-05-31 11:49:58 +0800

eclement
21

Any valid e-mail address. :-)

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answered 2012-06-01 01:06:42 +0800

samchuang
4084 ● 4

I tried "[email protected]", but won't pass your Constraint

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answered 2012-06-01 12:22:29 +0800

eclement
21

Strange... I tried exactly what you typed ("[email protected]") and it passes validation for me. Tomcat 7, JRE 7, ZK 6.0.1.

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answered 2012-06-01 12:52:04 +0800

gekkio

899 ● 1
http://gekkio.fi/blog

I'm pretty sure your regexp is wrong. I don't know why it passes validation, but if we look at the regexp closely, it doesn't seem to be correct.

The right-hand side of this regexp is this:

([0-9a-zA-Z]*[.]){2,6}$/

This means that the e-mail string must end with at least 2, and at most 6 times a string that looks like this:

something.

(note the dot at the end).
That doesn't make any sense with e-mail addresses. For example:

[email protected]

That e-mail address has one such string ("yahoo."), but not two because the part "com" does not end with a dot. The regexp passes if you add a dot to the end so that "com." becomes another match:

[email protected].

However, that is not a valid e-mail address. Because you require at least two suffix strings that have a dot in the end, I don't see how your regexp could ever validate an e-mail address correctly. I recommend that you look at this page where you can find some very good e-mail regexpressions: Comparing E-mail Address Validating Regular Expressions