email validation

[Hendricus]

I found this at http://regexlib.com/REDetails.aspx?regexp_id=192

^{[\w-]+(?:.[\w-]+)*@(?:[\w-]+.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,7}$}

It had the comment:

Matches 99.99% of e-mail addresses (excludes IP e-mails, which are rarely used). The {2,7} at the end leaves space for top level domains as short as .ca but leaves room for new ones like .museum, etc.

But I can't get it to work :mad:

Here is my code:

if (ereg ("^{[\w-]+(?:.[\w-]+)*@(?:[\w-]+.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,7}$",} $email)){
$email_check = 1;
}

What am i doing wrong?

Thanx in advance!
Hendricus php~newbie

[dalecosp]

Well, there are several different computer languages out there 😃 and believe it or not, many of them use different types of regexps. Now, I'm just guessing, after looking briefly at yours, and checking the site (which happened to be called what, ASPsmith? what the H**k is ASP :rolleyes: ) that the one you picked up has some little something that isn't quite right for PHP. I believe that PHP uses PCRE (Perl-Compatible-Regular-Expressions) as well as some form of POSIX compatible ones, but I'm not sure. Check the handbook to be sure.

Here's my email check:

function ValidateInput($var, $type) {
        trim($var);
        if ($type=="email") { $Pattern = "^([0-9a-z]+)([0-9a-z\._-]+)@([0-9a-z\._-]+)\.([0-9a-z]+)"; }
        elseif ($type=="phone") { $Pattern = "^([0-9]{3})-([0-9]{3})-([0-9]{4})"; }
        $valid=ereg($Pattern, $var);
        return $valid;
} # end of Function

I bet it'll work for you, although I'm sure someone else can come up with something different, maybe even better....

HTH,

[matt_4013]

Hi there! This is the best one I've ever come across, can't remember where I got it though. PHP mailing list I think! Cheers to whoever made it 😉

$expression = "^[-!#$%&\'*+\\./0-9=?A-Z^_`a-z{|}~]";
$expression .= "+@";
$expression .= "[-!#$%&\'*+\\/0-9=?A-Z^_`a-z{|}~]+\.[-!#$%&\'*+\\./0-9=?A-Z^_`a-z{|}~]+$";

if(!ereg($expression, $email)) {

echo "Bad email address, you scum!";
} else {

echo "Life is good, my furry friend!";
}

[craigh]

nah - this is what you want:

http://phpclasses.spunge.org/browse.html/package/13.html

[mcgruff]

I'd be interested to hear your comments on the need for complex expression matching. Is there any need to do anything more than a quick check for an "@" and no more than two "." after the "@"?

$domain = strstr($email, '@');
IF (!strstr($email, '@') OR substr_count($domain, ".") == 0  OR substr_count($domain, ".") > 2) { ...etc

[xblue]

definitely, since it allows a more finegrained control. your example allows invalid email addresses but excludes valid ones (more than two "." after the "@" is perfectly valid).

[Hendricus]

Oops I didn't even see that, Dalescop... I got that url from a phpbuilder.com forum... Well it was after 3am when I looked at it so am I forgiven 😃

But thanx all, I'll have a go with Math's short script. Craigh's link is a bit oevr the top I think. If the site I'm working on uses many of these scripts I might need extra storage on the server hehehe

Cheers,
Hendricus

Well Math's script ain't all that either, I believe it accepts invalid email addresses like:

johndoe@g....gg!g.whatever

[Hendricus]

Well after some copy pasting and mixing it I think I've got it:

if (!ereg("^{[-!#$%&'+./0-9=?A-Z_`a-z{|}~]+@{1}([a-z0-9]{1}[a-z0-9-][a-z0-9]{1}.{1})+([a-z]+.){0,1}([a-z]){2,4}$",} trim($email)))

Cheers,
Hendricus

[Hendricus]

How about allowing a space between input?

if (ereg ("^{[a-zA-ZÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ-]{2,}$",} $firstname))

doesn't allow a name like "Billy Bob"

One of these days I'll understand this ereg stuff 🙁

Cheers,
Hendricus

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by mcgruff
I'd be interested to hear your comments on the need for complex expression matching. Is there any need to do anything more than a quick check for an "@" and no more than two "." after the "@"?

Hmm, I dunno. Email me at "-#$%~`||}@|_)*&^%$.#$%.com" and we'll talk it over....

😉

[mcgruff]

Hmm, I dunno. Email me at "-#$%~`||}@|_)*&^%$.#$%.com" and we'll talk it over....

Couldn't email you so I'll have to post here : )

OK, that's a dog but couldn't people legitimately have "-" "_" "~" aor other special chars in their address which (I presume) the above would block?

[dalecosp]

My regexp does allow the underscore _ and the hyphen - , but not as the initial character.... I'd never thought about the tilde ~ ? I don't know that I've ever actually seen such an address, but, of course I don't know nearly everything. Anyone got a good article on 'the naming of users.' ?? Seems to me that nowdays the rules are simpler, and the names dumber, than ever. My latest ISP doesn't even allow underscore or hypen in their usernames....

[mcgruff]

Rgr - it would be good if we could round this thread off with a definitive list of exactly what special chars should be blocked by a validation check.

Coming up with code to block special chars is, I suppose easy enough but I'm still unclear exactly what to block.

Anyone?

[xblue]

I think it is probably easier to list what is allowed. I'm sure about these:

letters
digits
period
hyphen
underscore
hyphen
and of course the @

I don't think ~ is valid.

[mcgruff]

Thanks XBlue.

Finally, here's a link I just remembered I had for a validation class in case it's useful to anyone:

http://www.killersoft.com/downloads/pafiledb.php?action=viewall

Info on RFC 822 - not sure if this is working:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html

[rheroux]

I found this one at the same site that you were searching originally Hendricus. Seems to work well.

<?php

$string = "[e-mail]";

if(preg_match("/^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.)|(([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}|[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$/",$string))
{
echo "It's a match.";
}
else
{
echo "Not a match";
}

?>

[Hendricus]

With a friend I tried to create some email addresses on his server:

[e-mail] is allowed and sending mail works
ben&[e-mail] is allowed and sending mail works

[e-mail] is a allowed address for the server but outlook crashes
euro€@domain.com is a allowed address for the server but outlook crashes
né[e-mail] is a allowed address for the server but outlook crashes

Lots a stuff is allowed email it seems...

Cheers
Hendricus

PS. how bout that space thing i mentioned above?

[Hendricus]

Originally posted by xblue
I think it is probably easier to list what is allowed. I'm sure about these:

letters
digits
period
hyphen
underscore
hyphen
and of course the @

I don't think ~ is valid.

There should be a organisation out there which have complete study groups for this... but I couln'dt find a thing on http://www.imc.org

🙁

Hendricus

[dalecosp]

Well the default regexp for adding users on a BSD system is:

[^[a-z0-9_][a-z0-9_-]*$]

Now, methinks that it's 'case insensitive', so one could generalize that UNIX user/mailbox names may start with an alphanumeric character or underscore, and contain underscores, hyphens, and alphanumeric characters...of course, in generalizing, you create a sizeable group of exceptions, I expect....

[Pigmaster]

Originally posted by Hendricus
Well after some copy pasting and mixing it I think I've got it:

if (!ereg("^{[-!#$%&'+./0-9=?A-Z_`a-z{|}~]+@{1}([a-z0-9]{1}[a-z0-9-][a-z0-9]{1}.{1})+([a-z]+.){0,1}([a-z]){2,4}$",} trim($email)))

Cheers,
Hendricus

But if you try to validate an email address of e.g.

[e-mail] it fails.

Anybody know how to get the extra sub-domains included in the ereg script?