Email Validation in JavaScript

Check Email Address with JavaScript and Regular Expressions

A while ago I put up a Password Strength Checker using JavaScript and Regular Expressions. On that same note, you can also check the structure of an email address utilizing the same methodology:

If your form element has the id=emailaddress and you add a form onSubmit=”return checkEmail();”, this is a Javascript function that you can utilize to return an alert if the email address has a valid structure or not:
<script language="javascript"> function checkEmail() { var email = document.getElementById('emailaddress'); var filter = /^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-])+\@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+\.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/; if (!filter.test(email.value)) { alert('Please provide a valid email address'); email.focus; return false; } } </script>

The function also returns the focus back to the email address field!

About Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in inbound marketing leveraging social media, blogging, search engine optimization, pay per click and public relations. Their clients include Angie's List, Mindjet, Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. If you're interested in having Douglas speak, please propose an event!

View all posts by Douglas Karr →

Note: Comments are welcome from real people, not companies. Most comments with links will be deleted.

Pingback: Impress your Web Visitors with real-time Form Validation | The Marketing Technology Blog
http://www.adeolonoh.com Ade

For forms with multiple email addresses, it would be good to do class=”emailaddress”. If you have the prototype.js library (http://www.prototypejs.org) included on the page you can do something like this:

var valid = true;
var filter = /^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-])+\@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+\.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/;
$$(‘.emailaddress’).each( function(email) {
if (!filter.test(email.value)) {
alert(?Please provide a valid email address?);
email.focus;
valid = false;
}
});
return valid;
- http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr
  
  Thanks Ade! I’m going to need to learn some more about classes and JavaScript!
- http://chipsquips.com Sterling Camden
  
  Doug’s original example was cool, but this one is freezing! I did not know that you could process elements having a class this manner, and the functional syntax is sweet.
  - http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr
    
    Ade and his team are amazing!
http://geekwhat.com Tony Chung

Nice, I can always count on you for some wicked cool scripts!
- http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr
  
  Thanks Tony!
Pingback: Chipping the web - simple, not secure -- Chip’s Quips
http://weblog.raganwald.com Reg Braithwaite

I like the idea, but I would be hesitant to adopt this particular regular expression without description of which legal email addresses it does not accept and which illegal addresses it permits.

For an example of a regular expression that does a decent job alongside an explanation of which cases it does not cover, see this:

http://www.regular-expressions.info/email.html

My personal preference is to cover most of the simple cases and issue a warning for everything else rather than rejecting it. If Bob really want sto submit bob@com.museum rather than bob@museum.com, why not let him?
- http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr
  
  Hi Reg,
  
  You can test out the Regex utilizing an Online Regex Tester.
  
  Also, there’s definitely much more that can be done if you want to ensure an email address is valid in accordance with the RFC.
  
  There are a few reasons not to allow someone to enter an invalid email address:
  1. They will get annoyed at you when the email they expected doesn’t get through – regardless of whether or not it was your fault the address was entered incorrectly.
  2. If com.museum was a valid domain and, let’s say, Yahoo! operated it – any email address that bounced would have a negative impact on your company’s reputation for email delivery. This could lead to all of your company’s email being blocked.
  3. If your email service provider allowed you to enter bob@com.museum, you’d also pay for each email sent to that email address until they unsubscribed that address due to bounces. I would steer clear of any ESP that would allow an invalid email address like that – they’re just taking your money!
  
  Thanks for stopping by!
  Doug
http://www.thebigmind.org Android

Perfect, just what I needed!
gemp

There’s much simpler way to write the expression:
var regex = /^[a-z0-9\._-]+@([a-z0-9_-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,6}$/i;
- With the final modifier /i there’s no need to indicate the upper case range.
- I don’t know of any TLD with numbers in it.
On a side note, I do allow TLD with up to 6 chars; new ones arrive regularly and you never know (well, somme future ones may even have numbers in it, I know).
Szubu

Hi there,

I am tring to use this in an existing form in real-time, but this doesnt appear to be validating in realtime like your password strength checker…

Or, am i just that clueless, and it aint workin for me?
Szubu – LorenB

btw, I really like what you have going on here, your tutorials are very simple, I will definately be bookmarking this one….
http://www.geeksWithBlogs.net/SanjayU sanjay

Just an FYI; I haven’t tried Ade’s solution but the pattern above doesn’t validate e-mail addresses with apostrophes in them.. (eg, Mike.O’Hare@Whatever.com). Apostrophes are valid per the RFC 2821/2822 –> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html

HTH,
Sanjay
- http://www.robbyslaughter.com/ Robby Slaughter
  
  It also doesn’t appear to handle the plus character, which is valid.
  
  See: http://www.dominicsayers.com/isemail/
  
  On a larger note, this is a key problem with cutting-and-pasting code, one which deserves a full discussion in itself.
  
  @robbyslaughter.com
  - ashish
    
    you are nutz..
    
    it's working fine..!@
http://www.pandeblog.org/ Pande

Would be fine if we could find a solution to avoid fake e-mail addresses on comments on WordPress
http://www.gheesh.org/ Gheesh

Just a small correction: The regular expression has an extra ()+ at the end. It should read:

^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-])+\@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+\.)+[a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4}$

With the first one any length TLDs would be accepted (which is not intrinsecally wrong as others have pointed out, but if that was the intention the expression could be shortened).
Adnan

Can you please explain the regular expression of this code and how its working? Also about .test – Is .test a default statement in javascript to check things like you did in the code above?
http://www.richonet.com Deepak Rai

This is a short code for email expression-

function validateEmail(id)
{
var emailPattern = /^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$/;
return emailPattern.test(id);

}
Deepak Rai
varanasi
Deepak Rai

This is a short code for email expression-

function validateEmail(id)
{
var emailPattern = /^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$/;
return emailPattern.test(id);

}
Deepak Rai
varanasi
Amanda

Thanks a lot uncle. That helped me a lot

Amanda
david

thanks for the code !
William

Thanks, but there is an error in this regex. I'm not a regex expert, but I tried email:

test@test

and it passed the regex… I noticed it's lacking escaping the "." so it should be:

/^([a-zA-Z0-9_.-])+@(([a-zA-Z0-9-])+.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/
http://intensedebate.com/people/brandoncorbin brandoncorbin

Im rolling with

/^\\w+([\\.-]?\\w+)*@\\w+([\\.-]?\\w+)*(\\.\\w{2,3})+$/
- http://www.facebook.com/dimitris.gi.9 Dimitris Gi
  
  and what about .info’s ?
  - http://www.facebook.com/dimitris.gi.9 Dimitris Gi
    
    oh shit… 3 years ago? :S
Julijan

Well, this is just a rough check but not 100% accurate, for example this would be okay with john_doe.@gmail.com which is actually not a valid e-mail address (dot is not allowed as a last character in local part of e-mail).
Also it would accept john…doe@gmail.com which is also invalid since there cannot be more than one dot in a sequence.

These are just some flaws I noticed at the first sight.
My intention is not bashing just to point this out in case someone is planning to use this as a security check – not secure enough.

For info about valid e-mail addresses check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_address
Federico

Deepak,

Actually, I think you need to apply a escape for the dot (“.”). So , your function should be, instead:

function validateEmail(id)
{
var emailPattern = /^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$/;
return emailPattern.test(id);

}

Otherwise, the dot would mean “any character”. I believe such special characters need to be escaped.

Regards,

Federico
Pingback: how to validate email address? - Hot Scripts Forums
Umair Majeed

function validateEmail(fld) {
var error=”";
var tfld = trim(fld.value); // value of field with whitespace trimmed off
var emailFilter = /^[^@]+@[^@.]+.[^@]*ww$/ ;
var illegalChars= /[(),;:\"[]]/ ;

if (fld.value == “Enter your email Address”) {

error = “Please enter your Email address.n”;
} else if (!emailFilter.test(tfld)) { //test email for illegal characters

error = “Please enter a valid email address.n”;
} else if (fld.value.match(illegalChars)) {

error = “Please enter a valid email address.n”;
}
return error;
}
Umair Majeed

function validateEmail(fld) {
var error=”";
var tfld = trim(fld.value); // value of field with whitespace trimmed off
var emailFilter = /^[^@]+@[^@.]+.[^@]*ww$/ ;
var illegalChars= /[(),;:\"[]]/ ;

if (fld.value == “Enter your email Address”) {

error = “Please enter your Email address.n”;
} else if (!emailFilter.test(tfld)) { //test email for illegal characters

error = “Please enter a valid email address.n”;
} else if (fld.value.match(illegalChars)) {

error = “Please enter a valid email address.n”;
}
return error;
}
Umair Majeed

function validateEmail(fld) {
var error=”";
var tfld = trim(fld.value); // value of field with whitespace trimmed off
var emailFilter = /^[^@]+@[^@.]+.[^@]*ww$/ ;
var illegalChars= /[(),;:\"[]]/ ;

if (fld.value == “Enter your email Address”) {

error = “Please enter your Email address.n”;
} else if (!emailFilter.test(tfld)) { //test email for illegal characters

error = “Please enter a valid email address.n”;
} else if (fld.value.match(illegalChars)) {

error = “Please enter a valid email address.n”;
}
return error;
}
Umair Majeed

function trim(s)
{
return s.replace(/^s+|s+$/, ”);
}
Umair Majeed

function validateEmail(fld) {
var error=”";
var tfld = trim(fld.value); // value of field with whitespace trimmed off
var emailFilter = /^[^@]+@[^@.]+.[^@]*ww$/ ;
var illegalChars= /[(),;:\"[]]/ ;

if (fld.value == “Enter your email Address”) {

error = “Please enter your Email address.n”;
} else if (!emailFilter.test(tfld)) { //test email for illegal characters

error = “Please enter a valid email address.n”;
} else if (fld.value.match(illegalChars)) {

error = “Please enter a valid email address.n”;
}
return error;
}
Umair Majeed

function trim(s)
{
return s.replace(/^s+|s+$/, ”);
}
https://alicebob.myopenid.com/ Harmen

The ‘.focus’ is a function, it should be:

email.focus()
https://alicebob.myopenid.com/ Harmen

The ‘.focus’ is a function, it should be:

email.focus()
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SGDOG4TV4BSEXL56GZADGCITAE Dinesh Kumar

awesome
http://www.roymj.com/ Roy M J

Works like gem.. Great use of reg expressions in javascript…
http://twitter.com/bornhall lennart bornhäll

It´s a crack in the gem…
The address “mmm@mmm..com” will be accepted. But two dots together is not valid.
http://www.facebook.com/dishantsonofagun Dishant Agrawal

Fellas, use . It does not require any JS validation.
- http://www.marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr
  
  But only works with modern browsers. Unfortunately, the world hasn’t caught up just yet. —
  Sent from Mailbox for iPhone

About Douglas Karr

Information regarding cookies