Question

Edit 02/05/2011

Ok, so i need to make my validation clientside, so I need what asked for below in c# to actually be in jquery. I will also be validating server side so I would appreciate more input there.

Original Question

Well, im on a real noob question trip today!!!

My previous question was for a specific regex. Now I have it and it works..how can I roll it out over multiple text boxes? I don’t want to use multiple Regular Expression Validation tools as they would clutter up my design space and I don’t think it’s a very elegant solution (It’s for a degree project)

Is there a method I could write? Along the lines of

public validator(string)
{
   doessomething.tostring
   return true/false
}

and access by

if (validator(txtsomething.text.tostring()) = true)
{
  Dothis
}

else
{
  dothis
}

Please be patient if my question is garbage 🙂
Thanks“

Answer 1

How about creating a custom control? I’ve edited my answer to include jQuery as well as server side validation. I don’t know what regex you’re using so I’ve just used a simple one testing for letters only.

javascript (also include the jQuery file):

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
    function validateText(source, args) {

        var allTextFieldsValid = true;

        $(".noNumbers").each(function () {
            if (!/^[a-zA-Z]*$/.test(this.value)) {
                allTextFieldsValid = false;
            }
        });

        args.IsValid = allTextFieldsValid;
    }

</script>

.aspx page:

// set a specific css class on the textboxes you want to check so that jQuery can
//  find them easily
<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" CssClass="noNumbers"></asp:TextBox>
<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox2" runat="server" CssClass="noNumbers"></asp:TextBox>
<asp:Button ID="SubmitButton" runat="server" Text="submit" OnClick="Submit_Click" />

<asp:CustomValidator ID="MyValidator" runat="server" 
        OnServerValidate="Text_Validate" Text="Oops, sorry, no numbers!" 
        ClientValidationFunction="validateText"></asp:CustomValidator>

code behind:

protected void Submit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if (Page.IsValid)
        {
            // do stuff
        }
        else
        {
            // do other stuff
        }
    }

    protected void Text_Validate(object source, ServerValidateEventArgs args)
    {
        args.IsValid = true;

    // I've done each textbox by id, but depending on how many you might want to loop through the controls instead

        if (!IsTextValid(TextBox1.Text))
        {
            args.IsValid = false;
        }

        if (!IsTextValid(TextBox2.Text))
        {
            args.IsValid = false;
        }
    }

    private bool IsTextValid(string myTextValue)
    {
        string myRegexString = @"^[a-zA-Z]*$";

        return Regex.IsMatch(myTextValue, myRegexString);
    }

Hope this helps!