Question

I have not found a good solution: I have a text box in which users need to be able to type specific info into. For example the command might be “9030 OUT FU [1234 TEST]”. I need to “scrub” this text box to ensure that the data was typed in exactly this format (caps not necessary). However there are approximately 50 of these different types of commands.

I am fairly new to javascript, but with good direction can understand it. Is this possible with javascript? Once the data is entered into the text box, it will run a function to return some information, and the text box will be clear for the next command. No 2 commands can be entered at the same time. I just need to check the format is 100% accurate for each command. Any help is appreciated, thank you.

Answer 1

<script type="text/javascript">   
function scrub(text) {
    var commands = new Array{"someCommand","anotherCommand",...};
    for (var i = 0; i <= commands.length; i++) {
        if (text.value.toLowerCase().equals(commands[i])) {
            //command is valid; do something here
        } else {
           alert("Invalid command");
        }
    }
    text.value = ""; //clears the text box
}
</script>

For your textarea do this:

<textarea onblur="scrub(this);" ...></textarea>