Invalid email address using preg_match

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to validate an email in php5?

I have used the following code to ensure email addresses provided on signup are valid.

(!preg_match("/^( [a-zA-Z0-9] )+( [a-zA-Z0-9\._-] )*@( [a-zA-Z0-9_-] )+( [a-zA-Z0-9\._-] +)+$/" , $email))

I entered a standard email address such as

yourname@company.co.uk

and it is flagging up as being invalid.

Can anyone help me with why this may be happening?

[link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36261/test-expand-my-email-regex) [link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/201323/what-is-the-best-regular-expression-for-validating-email-addresses) [link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/997078/email-regular-expression) [link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/46155/validate-email-address-in-javascript) ... [use search](http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=regex+email) — Teneff, Jun 23 '11 at 11:51

Shakti Singh · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-23T12:15:39.753

16

Why not just use filter_var

var_dump(filter_var($email,FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL));

EDIT

if(filter_var($email,FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) === false)
{
   echo 'Email is not valid';
}
else
{
   //do the stuff
}

edited Jun 23 '11 at 12:15

answered Jun 23 '11 at 11:54

Shakti Singh

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Using this, what would it produce if it was false? – sark9012 Jun 23 '11 at 12:12
Could I just wrap it in an if statement, so if (var_dump(filter_var($email,FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL))), then continue with the code? – sark9012 Jun 23 '11 at 12:13
@Luke: if the email address is not valid one it will return boolean false otherwise the email address itself – Shakti Singh Jun 23 '11 at 12:14
Thankyou for the code, I will test it now :) – sark9012 Jun 23 '11 at 12:20
Using that, it is stating a simple email address is invalid, hmmm. There must be something wrong with the passing of a variable! – sark9012 Jun 23 '11 at 12:23
@Luke: Just exercise here The running DEMO for you. http://codepad.org/E3RIsQG6 – Shakti Singh Jun 23 '11 at 12:25
Cheers bud, was a sloppy piece of code by me that I hadn't fixed. All sorted now! – sark9012 Jun 23 '11 at 12:39

paxdiablo · Answer 2 · 2011-06-23T11:55:07.993

6

Now can I ask you a question? What are those spaces doing in your regular expression? :-)

I'm pretty certain that spaces aren't actually valid in email addresses. And, even if they were, they wouldn't be required to be at specific positions relative to the separators (such as immediately before and after the @ character).

Although I generally disagree with the use of regular expressions for email addresses (just send an email with a confirmation link - that solves your problem and then some ^a), you should at least use the right regular expression if you must do it that way.

^a There are an untold number of perfectly valid email addresses that don't have an actual account behind them.

edited Jun 23 '11 at 11:55

answered Jun 23 '11 at 11:49

paxdiablo

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Agreed, and the correct email regex is quite ugly... – phant0m Jun 23 '11 at 11:55
I took the code from a google search, I didn't write it myself. I can only assume that it has flaws. I'll take a closer look. – sark9012 Jun 23 '11 at 12:11

Jason Rogers · Answer 3 · 2011-06-23T12:55:49.857

if you would like to use regex for matching emails, the following will match "sensible" addresses.

preg_match('/^([a-z0-9]+([_\.\-]{1}[a-z0-9]+)*){1}([@]){1}([a-z0-9]+([_\-]{1}[a-z0-9]+)*)+(([\.]{1}[a-z]{2,6}){0,3}){1}$/i', $email)

It's quite verbose but if you only want, like i said "sensible" addresses to pass - it does the job.

does get stuck on address like "example@somename.somewhere.com" because, after the @ symbol it looks for anything following a period to only be only 2-6 characters in length.

"example@somename-somewhere.com" however would pass fine.

I don't recommend trying to use a single regex solution for the job unless, as in my case, you only want to allow "sensible" addresses.

There is quite a good article that covers "correctly" validating email addresses here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9585

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 23 '11 at 11:56

-1

With the new domainless addresses that are planned to be released, paxdiablo's solution seems even better

answered Jun 23 '11 at 11:56

Marc Towler

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Invalid email address using preg_match

4 Answers4