Regular expression to verify zip code and checking for invalid characters

Question

I am trying to validate an input for zip codes, now this zip code should work for US, CANADA, UK, all the countries but omit any special characters, so i tried, checking for invalid characters first if that passes then i check for the zip code to either be US or if not just to make sure there are valid characters and not more than 8 (space in between them is ok as long as its now US(which includes - for 5 + 4)

The problem I am having is that 11215 for example is returning as false for the valid character validation and 11215@@ is returning false also.

Here are my regex:

var reg1 = /^[\^$%@!#&\*:<>\?\/\\~\{\}\(\)\+|]+$/;
var reg2 = /(^\d{5}$)|(^\d{5}-\d{4}$)|(([a-z0-9]{8})*$)/

var isOk = reg1.test("11215"); // returns false!
if(isOk)
{
   isOk = isOk && reg2.test("11215");
}

var isOk2 = reg1.test("11215@@"); // returns false also!
if(isOk2)
{
   isOk2 = isOk2 && reg2.test("11215@@");
}

possible duplicate of [ZIP Code (US Postal Code) validation](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/160550/zip-code-us-postal-code-validation) — 500 - Internal Server Error, Apr 01 '13 at 16:22

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 01 '13 at 16:23

The test for "bad chars", reg1 will always be false unless your string is made entirely of "bad chars". I don't think this is the behaviour you wanted.

var matchBad = /[^\s\da-z\-]/i;
// Match all non-whitespace, non-digit, non-alpabet, non-hyphen
if (false === matchBad.test("11215")) { // no bad chars detected
    console.log('pass!');
    // continue checking validity..
} else { // bad chars detected
    console.log('fail!);
}

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 01 '13 at 16:22

Your first regex is testing whether the entire string has those characters. If you want containment, remove the ^ and $ denoting the beginning and ending of your regex:

var reg1 = /[\^$%@!#&\*:<>\?\/\\~\{\}\(\)\+|]/;

This may be only part of the problem but it should get you somewhere. Note I also removed the + since it really only needs to match one character to detect a bad character.

Also another note of design. Your regex that exactly matches the pattern should really be sufficient for testing this. I'm not quite familiar though with the third type of zip, but you might want to make it capture the entire string (with ^ and $)

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 27 '13 at 16:06

Javascript should be like below

<script type="text/javascript">

    function IsValidZipCode(zipcode) {
        var isValid = /^[0-9]{5}(?:-[0-9]{4})?$/.test(zipcode);
        if (!isValid){
       alert('Invalid ZipCode');
      document.getElementById("zipcode").value = "";
    }
    }
</script>

Zipcode text should be

<input id="zipcode" class="zipcode" type="text" placeholder="Your Zipcode?" name="zipcode" onchange="IsValidZipCode(this.form.zipcode.value)" required >

Regular expression to verify zip code and checking for invalid characters

3 Answers3

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