Coldfusion Regex question

Question

Hi, I currently have a coldfusion regex that checks whether a string is alphanumeric or not. I would like to open that up a bit more to allow period and underscore characters. How would I modify this to allow that?

<cfset isValid= true/>
<cfif REFind("[^[:alnum:]]", arguments.stringToCheck, 1) GT 0>
 <cfset isValid= false />
</cfif>

Thanks

Answer 1

Would this work for you?

refind("[\w\d._]","1234abcd._")

Answer 2

This should do it.

<cfset isValidString= true/>
    <cfif REFind("[^[:alnum:]_\.]", arguments.stringToCheck, 1) GT 0>
    <cfset isValidString= false />
</cfif>

Also using "isValid" for a variable name is not a great practice. It is the name of a function in ColdFusion and could cause you issues someday.

Answer 3

No need for cfif - here's a nice concise way of doing it:

<cfset isValidString = NOT refind( '[^\w.]' , Arguments.StringToCheck )/>

Alternatively, you can do it this way:

<cfset isValidString = refind( '^[\w.]*$' , Arguments.StringToCheck ) />

(To prevent empty string, change * to +)

This method can make it easier to apply other constraints (e.g. must start with a letter, etc), and is a slightly more straight-forward way of expressing the original check anyway.

Note that the ^ here is an anchor meaning "start of line/string" (with $ being the corresponding end), more information here.