[RESOLVED] contact form - easy question for most of you

greentrancer

hello. i want to know what is $ or +$ because i see it in many contact forms. also, what is the difference between these:
/^[A-Z]+[a-z]$/
/^{[A-Z]+[a-z]+$/}
/^{[A-Z]+[a-z]$/}
/^[A-Z]+[a-z]/

thank you very much.

greentrancer

lso, which is the shortest and efficient method of checking somebodys name to be exactly "Name Surname" - "Green Trancer" ? in my form, i use
var filter = /^{[A-Z]+[a-z]*$/;}
var filter2 = /^{[A-Z]+[a-z]+\s+[A-Z]+[a-z]+$/;}
and then i check the name to be like filter or filter2.

how can i check that between the words to be exactly one space character ? thank you

Weedpacket

greentrancer wrote:
hello. i want to know what is $ or +$ because i see it in many contact forms. also, what is the difference between these:

The and + attach to the expression on their left, not their right (the same way they do in other parts of the pattern).

The relevant part of the documentation.

Weedpacket

greentrancer wrote:
how can i check that between the words to be exactly one space character ? thank you

Use exactly one space character (instead of [font=monospace]\s+[/font] - any number of any whitespace character).

Ashley_Sheridan

Have you thought about names that don't consist only of letters? A lot of surnames (particularly those of Irish or Scotish descent) have apostraphes in the name, such as O'Brian, O'Rielly, etc. There are also plenty or surnames that are double-barrelled, and this is becoming more common as marriages take place and the kids take both parents' surnames in this form.

Also, you're not really catering for any kind of foreign name at all, although this is less of a problem IMO, as names that use mostly western characters will often substitute the accented missing ones that they can't use (and often aren't able to easily on a standard qwerty keyboard) or they have a completely different name in English, for example 李连杰 is otherwise known by his western name; Jet Li.

bradgrafelman

Ashley Sheridan;10996384 wrote:
names that use mostly western characters will often substitute the accented missing ones that they can't use

Well if you're going to reject valid names, then why bother about the apostrophe or hyphen at all?

Heck, at that point, why worry about names at all? Just make an array of standard names ('John', 'Bob', etc.) and simply randomly assign the person's name from that array!

Ashley Sheridan;10996384 wrote:
(and often aren't able to easily on a standard qwerty keyboard)

I think you mean a standard US English keyboard; it's quite easy to type accented vowels if you're using a keyboard in a country whose primary language includes such vowels, namely because that keyboard is most likely going to have a very different layout (I'm reminded of my trips to Mexico... I had a hard time figuring out how not to type accented vowels at times :p).

TL;DR: It's pretty much impossible to come up with some form of pattern that's going to match all valid names, so there are going to be tradeoffs... unless, of course, you simply ditch the pattern matching in the first place and assume that people are capable of supplying their name when asked to do so without you verifying it for them.

Weedpacket

Ashley Sheridan;10996384 wrote:
Also, you're not really catering for any kind of foreign name at all,

Why start there? I've known people who's names were perfectly conventional English - but only had one part: no "Firstname Surname" business, just "Surname" (at least, that's what it was according to the passport of one of them).

greentrancer

Weedpacket thank you very much for the answer. Ashley Sheridan, i will use this contact form only for people from my country and we have normal names formed only with letters from a to z, but anyway, thanks for interest.

traq

I guess my name is abnormal

greentrancer

ok, now i have another question about the mail validation. mine looks like this: var filter = /^{[a-z0-9]+[a-z0-9_.-][a-z0-9]+@[a-z0-9]+[a-z0-9.-][a-z0-9]+.[a-z]{2,6}$/;} - the question is: what do you think ? add something ? do you have a better one ? thanks!

Weedpacket

[man]filter_var[/man]($variable, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)

bradgrafelman

greentrancer;10996569 wrote:
what do you think ?

Don't use it! It rejects perfectly valid e-mail addresses.

greentrancer;10996569 wrote:
add something ?

Nope, see below.

greentrancer;10996569 wrote:
do you have a better one ? thanks!

Yep, see above (Weedpacket's post).

johanafm

greentrancer;10996533 wrote:
i will use this contact form only for people from my country

I just want to make you aware of what you are actually saying: "I will use this contact form only for people whose ancestors have never left my country and never seen movies or read books of other cultures that might have inspired them to give their child a name which was not in use in this country 200 years ago (at least not as far as I'm aware)

traq

johanafm;10996631 wrote:
I just want to make you aware of what you are actually saying: "I will use this contact form only for people whose ancestors have never left my country and never seen movies or read books of other cultures that might have inspired them to give their child a name which was not in use in this country 200 years ago (at least not as far as I'm aware)

...AND, I've researched every name on every birth certificate and immigration record in every town/region for the last hundred years

AND I'm sure anyone that I missed won't mind that I reject or alter their name for my records (I'd think twice about this one).

greentrancer

thnak you bradgrafelman for the answer, but i don't know how to use filter_var($variable, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) yet because i am a beginner, but i will try to learn it. could you give me an example of email which it rejects ? thanks.

johanafm and traq, i don't see which is your problem ? excuse me, but do you know from what country am i and what names do we have ? And what name can a man have ? J0hn ? J!mmy ? Give me examples if you are so smart. In my country we have names only with caracthers from a to z, so ....

Ashley_Sheridan

greentracer, out of interest, what country are you from?

To answer your question about what email addresses it might reject, what about these valid addresses:

"john smith"@example.com
john.smith(comment)@example.com
john#smith@example.com

conversely it allows invalid email addresses, such as:
[email]abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz@example.com[/email]

Derokorian

if( filter_var($email,FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) ) {
   // $email is valid
   echo 'Valid email!';
} else {
   // $email is invalid
   echo 'Invalid email, please supply a valid email address.';
}

greentrancer

Ashley Sheridan, i'm from romania. do you know email with space characters in it ? or #, () ? because i never saw in my life such email address ...

thank you Derokorian, i will try your code. it's php so good to check valid email ?

bradgrafelman

greentrancer;10996796 wrote:
excuse me, but do you know from what country am i and what names do we have ?

You're excused. Also, do you know what names everyone in your country has?

I'll admit I've never been to Romania, but I'm from the state of Kansas here in the USA, and I don't even know the names of every single person in this state, let alone my entire country. You must be proud to know the names of every single person in yours!

(... or else you're just making assumptions, and we all know what happens when one assumes...)

greentrancer;10996801 wrote:
do you know email with space characters in it ? or #, () ?

Yes, I regularly use e-mail address here at work that contain # characters, and one of my primary personal e-mail addresses contains the '+' character. It's quite annoying when poorly-written web applications reject either of those e-mail addresses because they claim they are invalid.

greentrancer;10996801 wrote:
because i never saw in my life such email address ...

Wow... not only do you know the names of every person in your country, but now you're also claiming that you've seen every type of e-mail address in existence?? Impressive!

Ashley_Sheridan

greentracer, I've just spoken to one of the guys I work with, who is from Romania, and he said you use the hyphen in double-barelled names just like we do here.

Also, I find it hard to believe that no names from anyone in your country use any accented letters whatsoever, as they make up quite a chunk of your alphabet

What we're trying to say to you really, is that what you assume as simple, quite often isn't. In-fact, I'd go so far as to say that whenever you come across something that seems really, really simple, there's probably a hidden gotcha somewhere that you've yet to find.