alpha with space regex in cakephp

Question

I have a user registration form and I only want the user to specify their first and last name (i.e. Donalg Doonsberry). If the user doesn't provide their name in this fashion, the input will be rejected. I thought something like this would work for my regex user validation in cakephp:

  'name'=>array('Name has to be comprised of letters.
                '=>array('rule'=>array('custom', '/[A-Za-z ]+/')
           )),

Answer 1

You have to be careful validating names... what about:

• Donalg McDonald <- capital in the middle of a word
• Donalg Fooble-Whiffery <- hyphenated
• Donalg Déénsbnérry-McDonald Sr. 3rd <- you get the idea

To validate names in the format you specified:

/[A-Z][a-z]+ [A-Z][a-z]+/

Being a bit more lenient:

/([\w.-]+ )+[\w+.-]/

Answer 2

Personally, I wouldn't bother with first/last name validation. You can only validate their length (there is a built-in validation rule in cake for that) and make sure you put "allowEmpty" => true, if that's what you want.