Validating the email address in UITextField

Ketan Shinde picture Ketan Shinde · Feb 16, 2012 · Viewed 16.7k times · Source

I am trying to put validation in text field containing email address.
What is to be added in string "emailRegEx" to limit the user from inserting three dots in email address or what I have to write in method for same.

- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string. 

Here is my code:

- (BOOL)EmailValidationL:(NSString *)email
{
    NSString *emailRegEx =@"(?:[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])+)\\])";

    NSPredicate *regExPredicate =
    [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF MATCHES %@", emailRegEx];
    a= [regExPredicate evaluateWithObject:email];
    return a;
}

Answer

sch picture sch · Feb 16, 2012

There are better ways to validate an email address.

- (BOOL)validateEmailWithString:(NSString*)email
{
    NSString *emailRegex = @"[A-Z0-9a-z._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\\.[A-Za-z]{2,4}"; 
    NSPredicate *emailTest = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF MATCHES %@", emailRegex]; 
    return [emailTest evaluateWithObject:email];
}