Its really annoying that TextBox does not provide PreviewTextChanged event and everybody should invent the wheel every time to emulate it. I solved exactly the same issue recently and even published my solution on github as WpfEx project (take a look at TextBoxBehavior.cs and TextBoxDoubleValidator.cs).
Adam S's answer is very good, but we should consider few other corner cases as well.
- Selected text.
During coputing resulting text in our textBox_PreviewTextInput event handler we should consider that user can select some text in text box and new input will replace it. So we should use something like:
private static void PreviewTextInputForDouble(object sender,
TextCompositionEventArgs e)
{
// e.Text contains only new text and we should create full text manually
var textBox = (TextBox)sender;
string fullText;
// If text box contains selected text we should replace it with e.Text
if (textBox.SelectionLength > 0)
{
fullText = textBox.Text.Replace(textBox.SelectedText, e.Text);
}
else
{
// And only otherwise we should insert e.Text at caret position
fullText = textBox.Text.Insert(textBox.CaretIndex, e.Text);
}
// Now we should validate our fullText, but not with
// Double.TryParse. We should use more complicated validation logic.
bool isTextValid = TextBoxDoubleValidator.IsValid(fullText);
// Interrupting this event if fullText is invalid
e.Handled = !isTextValid;
}
And we should use the same logic when we'll handle OnPaste event.
- Validating the text
We can't use simple Double.TryParse, because user can type '+.' to type '+.1' ('+.1' - is absolutely valid string for double), so our validation method should return true on '+.' or '-.' strings (I even created separate class called TextBoxDoubleValidator and the set of unit tests because this logic is so important).
Before dig into implementation lets take a look at set of unit tests that will cover all corner cases for validation method:
[TestCase("", Result = true)]
[TestCase(".", Result = true)]
[TestCase("-.", Result = true)]
[TestCase("-.1", Result = true)]
[TestCase("+", Result = true)]
[TestCase("-", Result = true)]
[TestCase(".0", Result = true)]
[TestCase("1.0", Result = true)]
[TestCase("+1.0", Result = true)]
[TestCase("-1.0", Result = true)]
[TestCase("001.0", Result = true)]
[TestCase(" ", Result = false)]
[TestCase("..", Result = false)]
[TestCase("..1", Result = false)]
[TestCase("1+0", Result = false)]
[TestCase("1.a", Result = false)]
[TestCase("1..1", Result = false)]
[TestCase("a11", Result = false)]
[SetCulture("en-US")]
public bool TestIsTextValid(string text)
{
bool isValid = TextBoxDoubleValidator.IsValid(text);
Console.WriteLine("'{0}' is {1}", text, isValid ? "valid" : "not valid");
return isValid;
}
Note, that I'm using SetCulture("en-US') attribute, because decimal separator "local-specific".
I think I cover all corner cases with those tests but with this tool in your hands you can easily "emulate" user imput and check (and reuse) whatever cases you want. And now lets take a look at TextBoxDoubleValidator.IsValid method:
/// <summary>
/// Helper class that validates text box input for double values.
/// </summary>
internal static class TextBoxDoubleValidator
{
private static readonly ThreadLocal<NumberFormatInfo> _numbersFormat = new ThreadLocal<NumberFormatInfo>(
() => Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.NumberFormat);
/// <summary>
/// Returns true if input <param name="text"/> is accepted by IsDouble text box.
/// </summary>
public static bool IsValid(string text)
{
// First corner case: null or empty string is a valid text in our case
if (text.IsNullOrEmpty())
return true;
// '.', '+', '-', '+.' or '-.' - are invalid doubles, but we should accept them
// because user can continue typeing correct value (like .1, +1, -0.12, +.1, -.2)
if (text == _numbersFormat.Value.NumberDecimalSeparator ||
text == _numbersFormat.Value.NegativeSign ||
text == _numbersFormat.Value.PositiveSign ||
text == _numbersFormat.Value.NegativeSign + _numbersFormat.Value.NumberDecimalSeparator ||
text == _numbersFormat.Value.PositiveSign + _numbersFormat.Value.NumberDecimalSeparator)
return true;
// Now, lets check, whether text is a valid double
bool isValidDouble = StringEx.IsDouble(text);
// If text is a valid double - we're done
if (isValidDouble)
return true;
// Text could be invalid, but we still could accept such input.
// For example, we should accepted "1.", because after that user will type 1.12
// But we should not accept "..1"
int separatorCount = CountOccurances(text, _numbersFormat.Value.NumberDecimalSeparator);
// If text is not double and we don't have separator in this text
// or if we have more than one separator in this text, than text is invalid
if (separatorCount != 1)
return false;
// Lets remove first separator from our input text
string textWithoutNumbersSeparator = RemoveFirstOccurrance(text, _numbersFormat.Value.NumberDecimalSeparator);
// Second corner case:
// '.' is also valid text, because .1 is a valid double value and user may try to type this value
if (textWithoutNumbersSeparator.IsNullOrEmpty())
return true;
// Now, textWithoutNumbersSeparator should be valid if text contains only one
// numberic separator
bool isModifiedTextValid = StringEx.IsDouble(textWithoutNumbersSeparator);
return isModifiedTextValid;
}
/// <summary>
/// Returns number of occurances of value in text
/// </summary>
private static int CountOccurances(string text, string value)
{
string[] subStrings = text.Split(new[] { value }, StringSplitOptions.None);
return subStrings.Length - 1;
}
/// <summary>
/// Removes first occurance of valud from text.
/// </summary>
private static string RemoveFirstOccurrance(string text, string value)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
return String.Empty;
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
return text;
int idx = text.IndexOf(value, StringComparison.InvariantCulture);
if (idx == -1)
return text;
return text.Remove(idx, value.Length);
}
}
