Question

I am developing a web application for a french client. Now am really confused about the french character validation in PHP and Javascript too.

I would like to allow alphanumeric and special characters : é è ê î ï ô à ç , . #.

This is the PHP code I am using for alphanumeric and normal character validation

$aValid = array(' ', ' ','   ','    ','     ','-','.',',','#');
    if(!ctype_alnum(str_replace($aValid, '', $str))) {
        return false;
    } 
    else
        return true;

Please help me to include the validation of special characters : é è ê î ï ô à ç , . # in this code. I am also confused about the validation in javascript too. It is UTF-8 encoded so can I directly use the special characters in it?

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

I would use regular expressions for such tasks:

return preg_match("/^[a-z\déèêîïôàç,.#]+$/ui", $str);