Regular expressions for validating a mailing address.

Question

Hi alll

I have strings like follow

field_zip_code:"48103"

taxonomy:88 field_zip_code:"48103"

taxonomy:88 field_state:"MI" field_zip_code:"48103"

From here i want to extract variable values like 48103,88,MI

i need regular expressions in PHP,

Thanks in advance Kamal

Answer 1

You better use three regular expressions for the three fields you want

field_zip_code:"(\d+)"
taxonomy:(\d+)
field_state:"(\w+)"

Answer 2

There is no proper grammar to apply the regex to :(

Answer 3

If the 3 fields are always ordered like this,

^(?:taxonomy:(\d+))?\s*(?:field_state:"([^"]+)")?\s*(?:field_zip_code:"([^"]+)")$

Otherwise, perform 3 matches as @Otto suggested.

Answer 4

I encourage you to also be thinking about non-standard zipcodes. 009HH, for example, is a valid ZIP in the US Postal Mail system.

Also, do think about Canadian zipcodes if your business needs to support them - they're in a radically different format.