PHP preg_match - only allow alphanumeric strings and - _ characters

php regex preg-match
Lee Price picture Lee Price · Oct 13, 2011 · Viewed 100k times · Source

I need the regex to check if a string only contains numbers, letters, hyphens or underscore

$string1 = "This is a string*";
$string2 = "this_is-a-string";

if(preg_match('******', $string1){
   echo "String 1 not acceptable acceptable";
   // String2 acceptable
}

Answer

SERPRO picture SERPRO · Oct 13, 2011

Code:

if(preg_match('/[^a-z_\-0-9]/i', $string))
{
  echo "not valid string";
}

Explanation:

  • [] => character class definition
  • ^ => negate the class
  • a-z => chars from 'a' to 'z'
  • _ => underscore
  • - => hyphen '-' (You need to escape it)
  • 0-9 => numbers (from zero to nine)

The 'i' modifier at the end of the regex is for 'case-insensitive' if you don't put that you will need to add the upper case characters in the code before by doing A-Z

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