Restrict Special Characters in User Registration 1

[LittlBUGer]

Hello. I have an ASP.NET 2.0 website using the "built-in" ASP user management/roles/registration and whatnot. I've created a wizard on a page to do the user registration. One thing I've noticed is that though users can register with spaces in their usernames, anything else other than letters and numbers bombs out due to SQL and such. Since I don't see any reason for anyone using special characters in their usernames, I just want to restrict them from being able to create a user with such characters to make things easy. I think just using a regular expression validator will work but I'm no good at regular expressions. Can anyone help me with this or possibly suggest a better solution? I'm just trying to validate against a simple text box. Thanks.

http://downloads.littlbuger.info

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

 

[ca8msm]

http://regexlib.com

is a great place for you to start learning Regular Expressions.


-------------------------------------------------------

Mark,
[URL unfurl="true"]http://aspnetlibrary.com[/url]
[URL unfurl="true"]http://mdssolutions.co.uk[/url] - Delivering professional ASP.NET solutions
[URL unfurl="true"]http://weblogs.asp.net/marksmith[/url]

 

[LittlBUGer]

Though I thank you for your reply, I still can't seem to get a regular expression working just right for my scenario. Can someone please help or suggest a different method? Thanks.

http://downloads.littlbuger.info

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

 

[ca8msm]

What have you come up so far?


-------------------------------------------------------

Mark,
[URL unfurl="true"]http://aspnetlibrary.com[/url]
[URL unfurl="true"]http://mdssolutions.co.uk[/url] - Delivering professional ASP.NET solutions
[URL unfurl="true"]http://weblogs.asp.net/marksmith[/url]

 

[LittlBUGer]

^[A-Za-z]\w(?![!@#$%^&*.])

I'm trying to allow all alpha-numeric characters and no special characters. I'd also like to force the first character to be a letter instead of a number, but I'm just not sure if the above is correct...

http://downloads.littlbuger.info

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

 

[jbenson001]

but I'm just not sure if the above is correct...

Have you tried it?

 

[ca8msm]

The site I linked to has a "tester" tool which will allow you to test your expression against a value:

http://regexlib.com/RETester.aspx

Also, by doing a simple search on their site, I found:

http://regexlib.com/REDetails.aspx?regexp_id=515

which should get you started. There are many other examples like this on their site too.


-------------------------------------------------------

Mark,
[URL unfurl="true"]http://aspnetlibrary.com[/url]
[URL unfurl="true"]http://mdssolutions.co.uk[/url] - Delivering professional ASP.NET solutions
[URL unfurl="true"]http://weblogs.asp.net/marksmith[/url]

 

[LittlBUGer]

I've actually been trying the following out:

^[A-Za-z]\w+

at this site:

http://www.codehouse.com/webmaster_tools/regex/

And I keep getting varying results. Meaning it doesn't allow a number to be entered as first char, which is good, but it'll allow certain special chars, which isn't good, unless the results are just confusing me... I'm just confused now. :-\

http://downloads.littlbuger.info

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

 

[LittlBUGer]

Actually I think I got it now...

^[A-Za-z]\w{5,19}$

Minimum 6 chars, max 20, no numbers as first char, no special chars. It was the dollar sign at the end that seemed to fix it. Thanks for the help and sorry to bother you over something so simple.

http://downloads.littlbuger.info

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein