Question

I have a field that a user can input first and last name to fill out my form. Sometimes, users put on their first name and that results in empty fields in my database. PLEASE keep in mind that I cannot change this method completely because this form is part of a bigger project and it is being used by other websites of my company.

This is the part of the code that i need the validation around it. I already have a validation that ensures that the filed is not empty but I need on more to ensure that the field has two items in it separated by space.

<input name="fullname" class="fullname"   type="text" value="#fullname#" maxlength="150"/>
            <cfif fullname eq '' and check2 eq 'check2'>
            <br /><span style="color:red">*you must enter your full name</span></cfif>

The check2 eq ‘check2’ is checking if the form was submitted already to ensure a user submitting their data twice.

I thought of using regular expressions to do that but unfortunately I am not very familiar with how to use regx in CF9 and the documentation online through me off a bit.

I was also thinking to use “Find” or “FindOneOF”, any thoughts on that?

Also, I am trying to avoid using JQ,JS etc, so please try to keep your suggestions based on CF code IF possible.

Any help or different suggestions on how to tackle this issue will be very appreciated.

Answer 1

You could do something like this for server side validation:

<cfscript>
TheString = "ronger ddd";
TheString = trim(TheString); // get rid of beginning and ending spaces
SpaceAt = reFind(" ", TheString); // find the index of a space

// no space found -- one word
if (SpaceAt == 0) {
    FullNameHasSpace = false;
// at least one space was found -- more than one word
} else {
    FullNameHasSpace = true;
}
</cfscript>

<cfoutput>
<input type="input" value="#TheString#">
<cfif FullNameHasSpace eq true>
    <p>found space at position #SpaceAt#</p>    
    <p>Your data is good.</p>
<cfelse>
    <p>Did not find a space.</p>
    <p>Your data is bad.</p>
</cfif>
</cfoutput>