I want to validate name field which excepts only alphanumeric, apostrophe and a dot(.) For example, it should allow the string abc's home99,St. Mary's Hospital but I don't want the string starting with any of the special characters or ending with it for example 'abc or abc' or g_abc 56gfhg or abc 56gfhg..

i have used

stringPattern = /^[a-zA-Z0-9']*$/;

pattern but it allows apostrophe anywhere in the string.

I want to validate name field which excepts only alphanumeric, apostrophe and a dot(.) For example, it should allow the string abc's home99,St. Mary's Hospital but I don't want the string starting with any of the special characters or ending with it for example 'abc or abc' or g_abc 56gfhg or abc 56gfhg..

i have used

stringPattern = /^[a-zA-Z0-9']*$/;

pattern but it allows apostrophe anywhere in the string.

• javascript
• regex

4 Answers 4

try this regex:

\w(\w|'|\ )*\w

you can test it here: http://regexpal./

but it requires the username to be at least 2 characters long

var pattern = /^[^'][a-zA-Z0-9' ]*[^']$/;

console.log(pattern.exec("abc's home99"));
console.log(pattern.exec("'abc"));
console.log(pattern.exec("abc'"));

Output

[ 'abc\'s home99', index: 0, input: 'abc\'s home99' ]
null
null

In this Regular Expression, we say that, first character should not be ' (^[^']) and the last character should not be ' ([^']$). You already had the rest :)

I'd do:

^\w+(?:[.' ]*\w+)*$

Explanation:

The regular expression:

^\w+(?:[.' ]*\w+)*$

matches as follows:

NODE                     EXPLANATION

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  ^                        the beginning of the string
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \w+                      word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _) (1 or
                           more times (matching the most amount
                           possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  (?:                      group, but do not capture (0 or more times
                           (matching the most amount possible)):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    [.' ]*                   any character of: '.', ''', ' ' (0 or
                             more times (matching the most amount
                             possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \w+                      word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _) (1 or
                             more times (matching the most amount
                             possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  )*                       end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  $                        before an optional \n, and the end of the
                           string
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Try [A-Z,a-z,0-9,`-', ]* in pattern attribute of html input element. It will allow Letters,spaces,numbers,apostrophe and hyphen.