Question

I am trying to validate a text input. I have noticed though that it fails if there are any spaces in the text field.

validates_format_of :role, :with => /\A[a-zA-Z]+\z/, :message => "field should only have letters"

What do I need to change to allow spaces? Thanks

Update:

Changed question to anything but numbers, as I need to allow special characters in the text field.

Answer 1

Just add a space to the characters you are matching (at the moment a-z and A-Z). Hence

/\A[a-zA-Z ]+\Z/

Note that \s will match any whitespace character (including tabs and newlines).

Update

To allow everything but numbers, you can use a “negated character class”, which is made by putting a caret ^ at the start of the square brackets:

/\A[^0-9]+\Z/

or, since \d (for “digit”) is equivalent to [0-9],

/\A[^\d]+\Z/