How can I use javascript regex to validate a city name?

Question

var cityRegex = /^[a-zA-z] ?([a-zA-z]|[a-zA-z] )*[a-zA-z]$/; is what I tried.

But it errors when you type in a city like "St. Petersburg."

Update: Seems almost like a lost cause. Too many oddly-named cities out there with numbers, dashes, apostrophes, periods, etc.

Your best bet is to just validate number of characters and make sure there are no numbers. City names can have dashes as well as prefixes, I wouldn't trust a non forgiving regex for this. — elclanrs, Mar 27 '13 at 21:55
Sounds like a lost cause to me... Perhaps validate it against google map api — mplungjan, Mar 27 '13 at 21:55
Hill Number 1 is a city, so is Y City and Land O' Lakes - ever been to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch — mplungjan, Mar 27 '13 at 21:56
you didn't match dots in your regex, that's why "St. Petersburg" fails. — Fabian Lauer, Mar 27 '13 at 21:56
@nathanhayfield Not if it can be any city in a whole country... — user1729506, Mar 27 '13 at 21:57
@mplungjan: Not even numbers are safe. I think the Google Maps approch would be the most accurate but maybe is just not worth it. I'd just validate number of characters then, unless there are cities with just one letter...@mplungjan any examples of that? — elclanrs, Mar 27 '13 at 21:58
@elclanrs: Yes there are places with one letter names. There are 7 villages named Å in Norway alone... — Ken Herbert, Mar 27 '13 at 22:05

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

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If the comments don't make it clear enough, this is not something that can realistically be validated by regex. The correct thing to do here is just accept that there will be some bad data inputted and move along. If you really need the city to exist and you think that this javascript validation will help you, you are sorely mistaken.

In answer to your question, the correct validation here is:

.*

edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

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answered Mar 27 '13 at 22:42

mayhewr

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+1, although I would recommend `.+`. I think we can confidently say that there are no zero-width city names. – JDB Mar 27 '13 at 22:54
@Cyborgx37 Hah. I was gonna go with `[^\n]+`, since surely there are no 2-line cities. What if I live in the middle of nowhere in no city? Should you reject me for not living in a city? Certainly not. I think `.*` makes the point more clearly. – mayhewr Mar 27 '13 at 22:58

How can I use javascript regex to validate a city name?

1 Answers1