Most commonly used Regex expressions
Lately as part of my work I came across the need to validate some fields and realized probably there should be some common Regex expressions out there I could leverage. This came about because I was doing some code reviews and the validations were not working as intended and I wanted to find some generally accepted and tested expressions to ensure they would pass future testing efforts. Below is a table I found on the MSDN library you can refer to and I’ll add more expressions as the need for them arises or people share them.
| Field | Expression | Format Samples | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | ^[a-zA-Z”-‘s]{1,40}$ | John Doe O’Dell |
Validates a name. Allows up to 40 uppercase and lowercase characters and a few special characters that are common to some names. You can modify this list. |
| Social Security Number | ^d{3}-d{2}-d{4}$ | 111-11-1111 | Validates the format, type, and length of the supplied input field. The input must consist of 3 numeric characters followed by a dash, then 2 numeric characters followed by a dash, and then 4 numeric characters. |
| Phone Number | ^[01]?[- .]?(([2-9]d{2})|[2-9]d{2})[- .]?d{3}[- .]?d{4}$ | (425) 555-0123 425-555-0123 425 555 0123 1-425-555-0123 |
Validates a U.S. phone number. It must consist of 3 numeric characters, optionally enclosed in parentheses, followed by a set of 3 numeric characters and then a set of 4 numeric characters. |
| ^(?(“”)(“”.+?””@)|(([0-9a-zA-Z]((.(?!.))|[-!#$%&’*+/=?^`{}|~w])*)(?<=[0-9a-zA-Z])@))(?([)([(d{1,3}.){3}d{1,3}])|(([0-9a-zA-Z][-w]*[0-9a-zA-Z].)+[a-zA-Z]{2,6}))$ | someone@example.com | Validates an e-mail address. | |
| URL | ^(ht|f)tp(s?)://[0-9a-zA-Z]([-.w]*[0-9a-zA-Z])*(:(0-9)*)*(/?)([a-zA-Z0-9-.?,’/+&%$#_]*)?$ | http://www.microsoft.com | Validates a URL |
| ZIP Code | ^(d{5}-d{4}|d{5}|d{9})$|^([a-zA-Z]d[a-zA-Z] d[a-zA-Z]d)$ | 12345 | Validates a U.S. ZIP Code. The code must consist of 5 or 9 numeric characters. |
| Password | (?!^[0-9]*$)(?!^[a-zA-Z]*$)^([a-zA-Z0-9]{8,10})$ | Validates a strong password. It must be between 8 and 10 characters, contain at least one digit and one alphabetic character, and must not contain special characters. | |
| Non- negative integer | ^d+$ | 0 986 |
Validates that the field contains an integer greater than zero. |
| Currency (non- negative) | ^d+(.dd)?$ | 1.00 | Validates a positive currency amount. If there is a decimal point, it requires 2 numeric characters after the decimal point. For example, 3.00 is valid but 3.1 is not. |
| Currency (positive or negative) | ^(-)?d+(.dd)?$ | 1.20 | Validates for a positive or negative currency amount. If there is a decimal point, it requires 2 numeric characters after the decimal point. |
