I'd like to check if the user input is an email address in JavaScript, before sending it to a server or attempting to send an email to it, to prevent the most basic mistyping. How could I achieve this?
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23@Alex The reason I added this comment is that the suggested regex in the accepted answer will not allow existing live email addresses which is a bad start for a customer, and the really big problem is that even IF the address was accepted it still does not say if it works. The only way to reliably verify that a supplied email is a working valid email is to send a mail with a verification link. So, if your use case does not demand that you verify the email, just do a minimal test for @, otherwise use a verification email. Regex will only provide bad user experience.David Mårtensson– David Mårtensson2021-05-03 14:56:56 +00:00Commented May 3, 2021 at 14:56
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@David Mårtensson I added a + on your thoughts. However I do think that a verification email-link thing also can be bad user experience. One that can make you lose a customer.mikael1000– mikael10002021-06-03 10:22:01 +00:00Commented Jun 3, 2021 at 10:22
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7@mikael1000 Sure, but what is the purpose of a regex validation when you will not know if its a valid email anyway. If you do not want to intrude on the customer with a validation link just do the most simple validation <something> at <something> and leave it at that. It will ensure that the customer at least added something that might be an email, anything more it mostly a waste of code until you get to actually validating. You could possibly check if the domain exists with a dns lookup.David Mårtensson– David Mårtensson2021-06-04 14:23:12 +00:00Commented Jun 4, 2021 at 14:23
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2Very similar: How can I validate an email address using a regular expression?Peter Mortensen– Peter Mortensen2022-02-16 23:18:09 +00:00Commented Feb 16, 2022 at 23:18
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3I have to admit, I don't understand why there's some much validation going on when you can't predict if the user made a basic type using the valid characters anyway. Just a check for @ and at least one dot is enough at the start.Watts Epherson– Watts Epherson2022-08-23 10:56:43 +00:00Commented Aug 23, 2022 at 10:56
78 Answers
Using regular expressions is probably the best way of validating an email address in JavaScript. View a bunch of tests on JSFiddle taken from Chromium.
const validateEmail = (email) => {
return String(email)
.toLowerCase()
.match(
/^(([^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@"]+(\.[^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@"]+)*)|.(".+"))@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$/
);
};
The following is an example of a regular expression that accepts unicode.
const re =
/^(([^<>()[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|(\".+\"))@(([^<>()[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+\.)+[^<>()[\]\.,;:\s@\"]{2,})$/i;
Keep in mind that one should not rely on JavaScript validation alone, as JavaScript can be easily disabled by the client. Furthermore, it is important to validate on the server side.
The following snippet of code is an example of JavaScript validating an email address on the client side.
const validateEmail = (email) => {
return email.match(
/^(([^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|(\".+\"))@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$/
);
};
const validate = () => {
const $result = $('#result');
const email = $('#email').val();
$result.text('');
if(validateEmail(email)){
$result.text(email + ' is valid.');
$result.css('color', 'green');
} else{
$result.text(email + ' is invalid.');
$result.css('color', 'red');
}
return false;
}
$('#email').on('input', validate);
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<label for="email">Enter email address</label>
<input id="email" type="email">
<p id="result"></p>
13 Comments
%[email protected], "%2"@gmail.com, "a..b"@gmail.com, "a_b"@gmail.com, [email protected], [email protected] , [email protected]
are all valid, but Gmail will never allow any of these email addresses. You should do this by accepting the email address and sending an email message to that email address, with a code/link the user must visit to confirm validity.email@localhost
, i don't have an email
or any other funny user inputs.I've slightly modified Jaymon's answer for people who want really simple validation in the form of:
[email protected]
The regular expression:
/^\S+@\S+\.\S+$/
To prevent matching multiple @ signs:
/^[^\s@]+@[^\s@]+\.[^\s@]+$/
The above regexes match the whole string, remove the leading and ^
and trailing $
if you want to match anywhere in the string. The example below matches anywhere in the string.
If you do want to match the whole sring, you may want to trim()
the string first.
Example JavaScript function:
function validateEmail(email) {
var re = /\S+@\S+\.\S+/;
return re.test(email);
}
console.log(validateEmail('my email is [email protected]')); // true
console.log(validateEmail('my email is anystring@anystring .any')); // false
8 Comments
name@[email protected]
. Try pasting your line into a JavaScript console. I believe your intention was to match only the entire text, which would require the beginning of text '^' and end of text '$' operators. The one I'm using is /^[^\s@]+@[^\s@]+\.[^\s@]+$/.test('name@[email protected]')
@
signs (as comments), also an email doesn't have to contain a period.http://ai
is someone's valid domain, so they could use e.g. a@ai
as their email.[^\s@]
means "neither a whitespace character nor @
". [xyz]
means any one of x, y or z, and [^xyz]
means any one character except x, y or z. \s
means "any whitespace character". \S
means "any character that is not whitespace".Just for completeness, here you have another RFC 2822 compliant regex
The official standard is known as RFC 2822. It describes the syntax that valid email addresses must adhere to. You can (but you shouldn't — read on) implement it with this regular expression:
(?:[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*|"(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21\x23-\x5b\x5d-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])*")@(?:(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?|\[(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?|[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21-\x5a\x53-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])+)\])
(...) We get a more practical implementation of RFC 2822 if we omit the syntax using double quotes and square brackets. It will still match 99.99% of all email addresses in actual use today.
[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?
A further change you could make is to allow any two-letter country code top level domain, and only specific generic top level domains. This regex filters dummy email addresses like
[email protected]
. You will need to update it as new top-level domains are added.
[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+(?:[A-Z]{2}|com|org|net|gov|mil|biz|info|mobi|name|aero|jobs|museum)\b
So even when following official standards, there are still trade-offs to be made. Don't blindly copy regular expressions from online libraries or discussion forums. Always test them on your own data and with your own applications.
Emphasis mine
6 Comments
Wow, there are lots of complexity here. If all you want to do is just catch the most obvious syntax errors, I would do something like this:
^\S+@\S+$
It usually catches the most obvious errors that the user makes and assures that the form is mostly right, which is what JavaScript validation is all about.
EDIT: We can also check for '.' in the email using
/^\S+@\S+\.\S+$/
5 Comments
{2,6}
to make sure the string after the period is between 2 and 6 chars long?There's something you have to understand the second you decide to use a regular expression to validate emails: It's probably not a good idea. Once you have come to terms with that, there are many implementations out there that can get you halfway there, this article sums them up nicely.
In short, however, the only way to be absolutely, positively sure that what the user entered is in fact an email is to actually send an email and see what happens. Other than that it's all just guesses.
1 Comment
name_part@domain_part
and practically anything, including an @
, is valid in the name_part; The address foo@[email protected]
is legal, although it must be escaped as foo\@bar@machine....
. Once the email reaches the domain e.g. 'example.com' that domain can route the mail "locally" so "strange" usernames and hostnames can exist.HTML5 itself has email validation. If your browser supports HTML5 then you can use the following code.
<form>
<label>Email Address
<input type="email" placeholder="[email protected]" required>
</label>
<input type="submit">
</form>
jsFiddle link
From the HTML5 spec:
A valid e-mail address is a string that matches the
email = 1*( atext / "." ) "@" label *( "." label ) label = let-dig [ [ ldh-str ] let-dig ] ; limited to a length of 63 characters by RFC 1034 section 3.5 atext = < as defined in RFC 5322 section 3.2.3 > let-dig = < as defined in RFC 1034 section 3.5 > ldh-str = < as defined in RFC 1034 section 3.5 >
This requirement is a willful violation of RFC 5322, which defines a syntax for e-mail addresses that is simultaneously too strict (before the "@" character), too vague (after the "@" character), and too lax (allowing comments, whitespace characters, and quoted strings in manners unfamiliar to most users) to be of practical use here.
The following JavaScript- and Perl-compatible regular expression is an implementation of the above definition.
/^[a-zA-Z0-9.!#$%&'*+\/=?^_`{|}~-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9](?:[a-zA-Z0-9-]{0,61}[a-zA-Z0-9])?(?:\.[a-zA-Z0-9](?:[a-zA-Z0-9-]{0,61}[a-zA-Z0-9])?)*$/
6 Comments
form
tag and submitted by a submit
input, which not everyone has the luxury of doing. Also, you can't really style the error message.bar@domain
(extension is missing), A@b@[email protected]
(multiple @) and so on (cf en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Examples). I found a nice regex here: emailregex.com@
is valid only if the extra "@" appear in username part and is wrapped in double quote. It seems that also the second point (missing extension) is not valid anymore since 2013 (icann.org/en/announcements/details/…), but yes it depends, I guess someone could consider extension optional. Finally, I choose the module address
from joi: joi.dev/module/address/api/?v=4.1.0#emailisvalidemail-options to validate email addresss in my app.I have found this to be the best solution:
/^[^\s@]+@[^\s@]+\.[^\s@]+$/
It allows the following formats:
1. [email protected] 2. [email protected] 3. [email protected] 4. [email protected] 9. #!$%&'*+-/=?^_`{}|[email protected] 6. "()[]:,;@\\\"!#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{}| ~.a"@example.org 7. " "@example.org (space between the quotes) 8. üñîçøðé@example.com (Unicode characters in local part) 9. üñîçøðé@üñîçøðé.com (Unicode characters in domain part) 10. Pelé@example.com (Latin) 11. δοκιμή@παράδειγμα.δοκιμή (Greek) 12. 我買@屋企.香港 (Chinese) 13. 甲斐@黒川.日本 (Japanese) 14. чебурашка@ящик-с-апельсинами.рф (Cyrillic)
It's clearly versatile and allows the all-important international characters, while still enforcing the basic [email protected] format. It will block spaces which are technically allowed by RFC, but they are so rare that I'm happy to do this.
1 Comment
In modern browsers you can build on top of @Sushil's answer with pure JavaScript and the DOM:
function validateEmail(value) {
var input = document.createElement('input');
input.type = 'email';
input.required = true;
input.value = value;
return typeof input.checkValidity === 'function' ? input.checkValidity() : /\S+@\S+\.\S+/.test(value);
}
I've put together an example in the fiddle http://jsfiddle.net/boldewyn/2b6d5/. Combined with feature detection and the bare-bones validation from Squirtle's Answer, it frees you from the regular expression massacre and does not bork on old browsers.
13 Comments
input.required = true;
line?sdf@sd
is a valid email address : dotless domain has some specific uses where you can practically validate who can access devices that can send emails. It's not because the ICANN strongly discourages the continuation of dotless domains that the entire world must upgrade their systems with no exceptions. Like a knive, it's not because it can hurt you will prohibit it everywhere. Again, to validate an email, send one and see what happens, don't use a regex; or use a regex and accept some custommers won't stay. The point is discouraged doesn't mean invalid.user@localhost
would be worse than useless. It would actively hinder the correct fill-out of the form.JavaScript can match a regular expression:
emailAddress.match( / some_regex /);
Here's an RFC22 regular expression for emails:
^((?>[a-zA-Z\d!#$%&'*+\-/=?^_`{|}~]+\x20*|"((?=[\x01-\x7f])[^"\\]|\\[\x01-\x7f])*
"\x20*)*(?<angle><))?((?!\.)(?>\.?[a-zA-Z\d!#$%&'*+\-/=?^_`{|}~]+)+|"((?=[\x01-\x
7f])[^"\\]|\\[\x01-\x7f])*")@(((?!-)[a-zA-Z\d\-]+(?<!-)\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}|\[(((?(?<
!\[)\.)(25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d?\d)){4}|[a-zA-Z\d\-]*[a-zA-Z\d]:((?=[\x01-\x7f])
[^\\\[\]]|\\[\x01-\x7f])+)\])(?(angle)>)$
All email addresses contain an 'at' (i.e. @) symbol. Test that necessary condition:
email.includes('@')
Or, if you need to support IE/older browsers:
email.indexOf('@') > 0
Don't bother with anything more complicated. Even if you could perfectly determine whether an email is RFC-syntactically valid, that wouldn't tell you whether it belongs to the person who supplied it. That's what really matters.
To test that, send a validation message.
5 Comments
Correct validation of email address in compliance with the RFCs is not something that can be achieved with a one-liner regular expression. An article with the best solution I've found in PHP is What is a valid email address?. Obviously, it has been ported to Java. I think the function is too complex to be ported and used in JavaScript. JavaScript/node.js port: https://www.npmjs.com/package/email-addresses.
A good practice is to validate your data on the client, but double-check the validation on the server. With this in mind, you can simply check whether a string looks like a valid email address on the client and perform the strict check on the server.
Here's the JavaScript function I use to check if a string looks like a valid mail address:
function looksLikeMail(str) {
var lastAtPos = str.lastIndexOf('@');
var lastDotPos = str.lastIndexOf('.');
return (lastAtPos < lastDotPos && lastAtPos > 0 && str.indexOf('@@') == -1 && lastDotPos > 2 && (str.length - lastDotPos) > 2);
}
Explanation:
lastAtPos < lastDotPos
: Last@
should be before last.
since@
cannot be part of server name (as far as I know).lastAtPos > 0
: There should be something (the email username) before the last@
.str.indexOf('@@') == -1
: There should be no@@
in the address. Even if@
appears as the last character in email username, it has to be quoted so"
would be between that@
and the last@
in the address.lastDotPos > 2
: There should be at least three characters before the last dot, for example[email protected]
.(str.length - lastDotPos) > 2
: There should be enough characters after the last dot to form a two-character domain. I'm not sure if the brackets are necessary.
Comments
This is the correct RFC822 version.
function checkEmail(emailAddress) {
var sQtext = '[^\\x0d\\x22\\x5c\\x80-\\xff]';
var sDtext = '[^\\x0d\\x5b-\\x5d\\x80-\\xff]';
var sAtom = '[^\\x00-\\x20\\x22\\x28\\x29\\x2c\\x2e\\x3a-\\x3c\\x3e\\x40\\x5b-\\x5d\\x7f-\\xff]+';
var sQuotedPair = '\\x5c[\\x00-\\x7f]';
var sDomainLiteral = '\\x5b(' + sDtext + '|' + sQuotedPair + ')*\\x5d';
var sQuotedString = '\\x22(' + sQtext + '|' + sQuotedPair + ')*\\x22';
var sDomain_ref = sAtom;
var sSubDomain = '(' + sDomain_ref + '|' + sDomainLiteral + ')';
var sWord = '(' + sAtom + '|' + sQuotedString + ')';
var sDomain = sSubDomain + '(\\x2e' + sSubDomain + ')*';
var sLocalPart = sWord + '(\\x2e' + sWord + ')*';
var sAddrSpec = sLocalPart + '\\x40' + sDomain; // complete RFC822 email address spec
var sValidEmail = '^' + sAddrSpec + '$'; // as whole string
var reValidEmail = new RegExp(sValidEmail);
return reValidEmail.test(emailAddress);
}
6 Comments
http://ai
is someone's valid domain, so they could use e.g. a@ai
as their email.This was stolen from http://codesnippets.joyent.com/posts/show/1917
email = $('email');
filter = /^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-])+\@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+\.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/;
if (filter.test(email.value)) {
// Yay! valid
return true;
}
else
{return false;}
Comments
Do this:
^([a-zA-Z0-9!#$%&'*+\/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-zA-Z0-9!#$%&'*+\/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-zA-Z0-9](?:[a-zA-Z0-9-]*[a-zA-Z0-9])?\.)+[a-zA-Z0-9](?:[a-zA-Z0-9-]*[a-zA-Z0-9])?)$
It's based on RFC 2822
Test it at https://regex101.com/r/857lzc/1
Often when storing email addresses in the database I make them lowercase and, in practice, regexs can usually be marked case insensitive. In those cases this is slightly shorter:
[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?
Here's an example of it being used in JavaScript (with the case insensitive flag i
at the end).
var emailCheck=/^[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?$/i;
console.log( emailCheck.test('[email protected]') );
Note:
Technically some emails can include quotes in the section before the @
symbol with escape characters inside the quotes (so your email user can be obnoxious and contain stuff like @
and "..."
as long as it's written in quotes). NOBODY DOES THIS EVER! It's obsolete. But, it IS included in the true RFC 2822 standard and omitted here.
Note 2: The beginning of an email (before the @ sign) can be case sensitive (via the spec). However, anyone with a case-sensitive email is probably used to having issues, and, in practice, case insensitive is a safe assumption. More info: Are email addresses case sensitive?
2 Comments
I'm really looking forward to solve this problem. So I modified email validation regular expression above
Original
/^(([^<>()\[\]\\.,;:\s@"]+(\.[^<>()\[\]\\.,;:\s@"]+)*)|(".+"))@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$/
Modified
/^(([^<>()\[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()\[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|(\".+\"))@(([^<>()\.,;\s@\"]+\.{0,1})+[^<>()\.,;:\s@\"]{2,})$/
to pass the examples in Wikipedia Email Address.
And you can see the result in here.
Comments
Simply check out if the entered email address is valid or not using HTML.
<input type="email"/>
There isn't any need to write a function for validation.
1 Comment
You should not use regular expressions to validate an input string to check if it's an email. It's too complicated and would not cover all the cases.
Now since you can only cover 90% of the cases, write something like:
function isPossiblyValidEmail(txt) {
return txt.length > 5 && txt.indexOf('@')>0;
}
You can refine it. For instance, 'aaa@' is valid. But overall you get the gist. And don't get carried away... A simple 90% solution is better than 100% solution that does not work.
The world needs simpler code...
1 Comment
Wikipedia standard mail syntax :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Examples https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adresse_%C3%A9lectronique#Syntaxe_exacte
Function :
function validMail(mail)
{
return /^(([^<>()\[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()\[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|(\".+\"))@(([^<>()\.,;\s@\"]+\.{0,1})+([^<>()\.,;:\s@\"]{2,}|[\d\.]+))$/.test(mail);
}
Valid emails :
validMail('[email protected]') // Return true
validMail('[email protected].') // Return true
validMail('[email protected]') // Return true
validMail('user@localserver') // Return true
validMail('[email protected]') // Return true
validMail('user+mailbox/[email protected]') // Return true
validMail('"very.(),:;<>[]\".VERY.\"very@\\ \"very\".unusual"@strange.example.com') // Return true
validMail('!#$%&\'*+-/=?^_`.{|}[email protected]') // Return true
validMail('"()<>[]:,;@\\\"!#$%&\'-/=?^_`{}| ~.a"@example.org') // Return true
validMail('"Abc@def"@example.com') // Return true
validMail('"Fred Bloggs"@example.com') // Return true
validMail('"Joe.\\Blow"@example.com') // Return true
validMail('Loïc.Accentué@voilà.fr') // Return true
validMail('" "@example.org') // Return true
validMail('user@[IPv6:2001:DB8::1]') // Return true
Invalid emails :
validMail('Abc.example.com') // Return false
validMail('A@b@[email protected]') // Return false
validMail('a"b(c)d,e:f;g<h>i[j\k][email protected]') // Return false
validMail('just"not"[email protected]') // Return false
validMail('this is"not\[email protected]') // Return false
validMail('this\ still\"not\\[email protected]') // Return false
validMail('[email protected]') // Return false
validMail('[email protected]') // Return false
Show this test : https://regex101.com/r/LHJ9gU/1
3 Comments
abc.def@mail
return true :(example
/mail
are not a valid TLDs, consider the following examples - user@com
, user@localserver
, and user@[IPv6:2001:db8::1]
- all of which are "valid" emails (in form, they meet the specification) but do not contain any .
Regex updated! try this
let val = '[email protected]';
if(/^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-_\.]+@([a-z]|[a-z0-9]?[a-z0-9-]+[a-z0-9])\.[a-z0-9]{2,10}(?:\.[a-z]{2,10})?$/.test(val)) {
console.log('passed');
}
typscript version complete
//
export const emailValid = (val:string):boolean => /^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-_\.]+@([a-z]|[a-z0-9]?[a-z0-9-]+[a-z0-9])\.[a-z0-9]{2,10}(?:\.[a-z]{2,10})?$/.test(val);
more info https://git.io/vhEfc
2 Comments
It's hard to get an email validator 100% correct. The only real way to get it correct would be to send a test email to the account. That said, there are a few basic checks that can help make sure that you're getting something reasonable.
Some things to improve:
Instead of new RegExp
, just try writing the regexp
out like this:
if (reg.test(/@/))
Second, check to make sure that a period comes after the @
sign, and make sure that there are characters between the @
s and periods.
Comments
This is how node-validator does it:
/^(?:[\w\!\#\$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`\{\|\}\~]+\.)*[\w\!\#\$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`\{\|\}\~]+@(?:(?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9](?:[a-zA-Z0-9\-](?!\.)){0,61}[a-zA-Z0-9]?\.)+[a-zA-Z0-9](?:[a-zA-Z0-9\-](?!$)){0,61}[a-zA-Z0-9]?)|(?:\[(?:(?:[01]?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.){3}(?:[01]?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\]))$/
Comments
A solution that does not check the existence of the TLD is incomplete.
Almost all answers to this questions suggest using Regex to validate emails addresses. I think Regex is only good for a rudimentary validation. It seems that the checking validation of email addresses is actually two separate problems:
1- Validation of email format: Making sure if the email complies with the format and pattern of emails in RFC 5322 and if the TLD actually exists. A list of all valid TLDs can be found here.
For example, although the address [email protected]
will pass the regex, it is not a valid email, because ccc
is not a top-level domain by IANA.
2- Making sure the email actually exists: For doing this, the only option is to send the users an email.
Comments
Use this code inside your validator function:
var emailID = document.forms["formName"]["form element id"].value;
atpos = emailID.indexOf("@");
dotpos = emailID.lastIndexOf(".");
if (atpos < 1 || ( dotpos - atpos < 2 ))
{
alert("Please enter correct email ID")
return false;
}
Else you can use jQuery. Inside rules define:
eMailId: {
required: true,
email: true
}
Comments
In contrast to squirtle, here is a complex solution, but it does a mighty fine job of validating emails properly:
function isEmail(email) {
return /^((([a-z]|\d|[!#\$%&'\*\+\-\/=\?\^_`{\|}~]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])+(\.([a-z]|\d|[!#\$%&'\*\+\-\/=\?\^_`{\|}~]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])+)*)|((\x22)((((\x20|\x09)*(\x0d\x0a))?(\x20|\x09)+)?(([\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]|\x21|[\x23-\x5b]|[\x5d-\x7e]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(\\([\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0d-\x7f]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF]))))*(((\x20|\x09)*(\x0d\x0a))?(\x20|\x09)+)?(\x22)))@((([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])([a-z]|\d|-|\.|_|~|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])*([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])))\.)+(([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])([a-z]|\d|-|\.|_|~|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])*([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])))$/i.test(email);
}
Use like so:
if (isEmail('[email protected]')){ console.log('This is email is valid'); }
Comments
var testresults
function checkemail() {
var str = document.validation.emailcheck.value
var filter = /^([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$/i
if (filter.test(str))
testresults = true
else {
alert("Please input a valid email address!")
testresults = false
}
return (testresults)
}
function checkbae() {
if (document.layers || document.getElementById || document.all)
return checkemail()
else
return true
}
<form name="validation" onSubmit="return checkbae()">
Please input a valid email address:<br />
<input type="text" size=18 name="emailcheck">
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
Comments
My knowledge of regular expressions is not that good. That's why I check the general syntax with a simple regular expression first and check more specific options with other functions afterwards. This may not be not the best technical solution, but this way I'm way more flexible and faster.
The most common errors I've come across are spaces (especially at the beginning and end) and occasionally a double dot.
function check_email(val){
if(!val.match(/\S+@\S+\.\S+/)){ // Jaymon's / Squirtle's solution
// Do something
return false;
}
if( val.indexOf(' ')!=-1 || val.indexOf('..')!=-1){
// Do something
return false;
}
return true;
}
check_email('check@thiscom'); // Returns false
check_email('[email protected]'); // Returns false
check_email(' [email protected]'); // Returns false
check_email('[email protected]'); // Returns true
Comments
Here is a very good discussion about using regular expressions to validate email addresses; "Comparing E-mail Address Validating Regular Expressions"
Here is the current top expression, that is JavaScript compatible, for reference purposes:
/^[-a-z0-9~!$%^&*_=+}{\'?]+(\.[-a-z0-9~!$%^&*_=+}{\'?]+)*@([a-z0-9_][-a-z0-9_]*(\.[-a-z0-9_]+)*\.(aero|arpa|biz|com|coop|edu|gov|info|int|mil|museum|name|net|org|pro|travel|mobi|[a-z][a-z])|([0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}))(:[0-9]{1,5})?$/i
1 Comment
Apparently, that's it:
/^([\w\!\#$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+\.)*[\w\!\#$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+@((((([a-z0-9]{1}[a-z0-9\-]{0,62}[a-z0-9]{1})|[a-z])\.)+[a-z]{2,6})|(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}(\:\d{1,5})?)$/i
Taken from http://fightingforalostcause.net/misc/2006/compare-email-regex.php on Oct 1 '10.
But, of course, that's ignoring internationalization.
Comments
Wow, there are a lot of answers that contain slightly different regular expressions. I've tried many that I've got different results and a variety of different issues with all of them.
For UI validation, I'm good with the most basic check of looking for an @ sign. It's important to note, that I always do server-side validation with a standard "validate email" that contains a unique link for the user to confirm their email address.
if (email.indexOf('@') > 0)
I have purposely chosen 0 even with zero-based as it also ensures there is a single character before the @.