Question

On a form, I need to make sure that all fields are filled in and that the phone # and email address are valid. I tried using a jQuery validation plugin but it changed the page’s look and feel. The plugin also was dynamically looking for some css files in some spot that was unexpected.

I love jQuery but the plugin seemed too much for what I wanted.

Since all I need to do is to make sure the fields are not empty and that the phone number is valid and email is valid, what javascript functions do you suggest? I will still use jQuery core.

Serverside we want to use apache commons PhoneNumberFormatter and same with email validation.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I think you’re looking for JavaScript regular expressions, using the RegExp object that comes as a standard part of JavaScript. You can use that to perform basic checking of email addresses and phone numbers.

e.g.

function emailIsValid(emailAddress) {
  var emailRegex = /\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b/;
  return !!emailAddress.match(emailRegex);
}

The code above is not tested, but it should give you an idea of how to do it. Just do the same again for the telephone number, and then do something like this:

if (emailIsValid(emailAddressValue) && telephoneNumberIsValid(telephoneValue)) {
  //Submit form
} else {
  alert ("There are errors on the form, please correct and invalid data");
}