eForm - simple validation to block a string

Hi, I have eForm working well but want to add some validation to block users submitting forms that contain a specific string in the message text. Looking at the documentation looks like I could use the #REGEX feature to do this. Is this the best way? My regular expression knowledge is a bit limited.

For example I know \abcd\ will test if the string contains abcd but how do I say ’does not contain’ abcd?

Am I on the right track?

Thanks in advance.

Tim

Why don’t you just filter out the words you don’t want with #FILTER?

from eform documentation...

# #FILTER - Filters do not validate the input but simply replace words or values using filter criteria. You can use the following filters:

* #FILTER #LIST
use double pipe to separate 2 comma separated lists of words and replacement values.
example; #FILTER #LIST badword,verybadword||goodword,verygoodword
* #FILTER #EVAL
example: #FILTER #EVAL return myFilterFunction($value);
(offcourse you have to make sure the function exists somehow)

example filter function
function myFilterFunction($value){
$badWords = array(’scribble’,’coding’);
$goodWords = array(’design’,’sleep’);
return str_replace($badWords,$goodWords,$value);
}
* #FILTER #REGEX
regular expression replace - syntax as for preg_replace() separate the search and replacement expression with a double pipe symbol (||)
TODO: example

Thanks for the suggestion. I want to validate the input though. If the message contains the string I want to reject the form and display an error text. eForm is great for this. For example I can make a validation rule #REGEX /abcd/ which rejects the field if it DOES NOT contains the string abcd but what I really want is to reject it if it DOES contain the string.

Any regular expression experts out there who can advise if this is possible? Or maybe I should be using the eForm #EVAL feature?

Use a negative regexp; that’s a ^ to negate an expression.

* #REGEX - regular expression - syntax as for preg_match() - see php manual
    example: #REGEX /^[a-z]+ [a-z0-9_]+/i

The above example will look for anything that is NOT alphanumeric, case insensitive. er... I think... probably best to go over the php manual on the subject!

In addition there’s a handy little tool for testing regular expressions on a windows platform: http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/

Probably too late for the original poster, but I came across this same issue and got it to work like this:



This rejects the form submission when the field value is equal to ’abcd’.

I’ve used it to check that the user has updated form fields that already contain a default value/label, such as ’first name’, ’surname’, etc...