Question

I’m trying to check a textarea to make sure it contains text phrase(s).

This is what I have so far but it’s not working:

$.validator.addMethod(
    "regex",
    function(value, element, regexp) {
        var check = false;
        var re = new RegExp(regexp);
        return this.optional(element) || re.test(value);
    },
    "Please include your keyword(s)."
);

$("#article_text").rules("add", { regex: "/test phrase/i" });

---

Any ideas? Ideally, i’d like it to check for multiple phrases and display the error if any one of them isn’t included in the textarea.

Answer 1

When using RegExp() you should leave off the / and flags, it should just be:

$("#article_text").rules("add", { regex: "test phrase" });

You can test it here. But since you want flags, a better way is to just use it directly, not creating from a string, like this:

$.validator.addMethod("regex", function(value, element, regexp) {
  return this.optional(element) || regexp.test(value);
}, "Please include your keyword(s).");

Then you’d call it like this:

$("#article_text").rules("add", { regex: /test phrase/i });

You can test that version out here.