Regex
Edit this pageWarning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 2.2, which is no longer maintained.
Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 7.0 (the current stable version).
Regex
Validates that a value matches a regular expression.
Applies to | property or method |
Options | |
Class | Regex |
Validator | RegexValidator |
Basic Usage
Suppose you have a description
field and you want to verify that it begins
with a valid word character. The regular expression to test for this would
be /^\w+/
, indicating that you're looking for at least one or more word
characters at the beginning of your string:
1 2 3 4 5
# src/Acme/BlogBundle/Resources/config/validation.yml
Acme\BlogBundle\Entity\Author:
properties:
description:
- Regex: "/^\w+/"
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
// src/Acme/BlogBundle/Entity/Author.php
namespace Acme\BlogBundle\Entity;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
class Author
{
/**
* @Assert\Regex("/^\w+/")
*/
protected $description;
}
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
<!-- src/Acme/BlogBundle/Resources/config/validation.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<constraint-mapping xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping/constraint-mapping-1.0.xsd">
<class name="Acme\BlogBundle\Entity\Author">
<property name="description">
<constraint name="Regex">
<option name="pattern">/^\w+/</option>
</constraint>
</property>
</class>
</constraint-mapping>
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
// src/Acme/BlogBundle/Entity/Author.php
namespace Acme\BlogBundle\Entity;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Mapping\ClassMetadata;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
class Author
{
public static function loadValidatorMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)
{
$metadata->addPropertyConstraint('description', new Assert\Regex(array(
'pattern' => '/^\w+/',
)));
}
}
Alternatively, you can set the match option to false
in order to assert
that a given string does not match. In the following example, you'll assert
that the firstName
field does not contain any numbers and give it a custom
message:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
# src/Acme/BlogBundle/Resources/config/validation.yml
Acme\BlogBundle\Entity\Author:
properties:
firstName:
- Regex:
pattern: "/\d/"
match: false
message: Your name cannot contain a number
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
// src/Acme/BlogBundle/Entity/Author.php
namespace Acme\BlogBundle\Entity;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
class Author
{
/**
* @Assert\Regex(
* pattern="/\d/",
* match=false,
* message="Your name cannot contain a number"
* )
*/
protected $firstName;
}
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
<!-- src/Acme/BlogBundle/Resources/config/validation.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<constraint-mapping xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping/constraint-mapping-1.0.xsd">
<class name="Acme\BlogBundle\Entity\Author">
<property name="firstName">
<constraint name="Regex">
<option name="pattern">/\d/</option>
<option name="match">false</option>
<option name="message">Your name cannot contain a number</option>
</constraint>
</property>
</class>
</constraint-mapping>
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
// src/Acme/BlogBundle/Entity/Author.php
namespace Acme\BlogBundle\Entity;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Mapping\ClassMetadata;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
class Author
{
public static function loadValidatorMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)
{
$metadata->addPropertyConstraint('firstName', new Assert\Regex(array(
'pattern' => '/\d/',
'match' => false,
'message' => 'Your name cannot contain a number',
)));
}
}
Options
pattern
type: string
[default option]
This required option is the regular expression pattern that the input will be matched against. By default, this validator will fail if the input string does not match this regular expression (via the preg_match PHP function). However, if match is set to false, then validation will fail if the input string does match this pattern.
htmlPattern
2.1
The htmlPattern
option was added in Symfony 2.1
type: string|Boolean
default: null
This option specifies the pattern to use in the HTML5 pattern
attribute.
You usually don't need to specify this option because by default, the constraint
will convert the pattern given in the pattern option into an HTML5 compatible
pattern. This means that the delimiters are removed (e.g. /[a-z]+/
becomes [a-z]+
).
However, there are some other incompatibilities between both patterns which
cannot be fixed by the constraint. For instance, the HTML5 pattern
attribute
does not support flags. If you have a pattern like /[a-z]+/i
you need to
specify the HTML5 compatible pattern in the htmlPattern
option:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
# src/Acme/BlogBundle/Resources/config/validation.yml
Acme\BlogBundle\Entity\Author:
properties:
name:
- Regex:
pattern: "/^[a-z]+$/i"
htmlPattern: "^[a-zA-Z]+$"
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
// src/Acme/BlogBundle/Entity/Author.php
namespace Acme\BlogBundle\Entity;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
class Author
{
/**
* @Assert\Regex(
* pattern = "/^[a-z]+$/i",
* htmlPattern = "^[a-zA-Z]+$"
* )
*/
protected $name;
}
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
<!-- src/Acme/BlogBundle/Resources/config/validation.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<constraint-mapping xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping/constraint-mapping-1.0.xsd">
<class name="Acme\BlogBundle\Entity\Author">
<property name="name">
<constraint name="Regex">
<option name="pattern">/^[a-z]+$/i</option>
<option name="htmlPattern">^[a-zA-Z]+$</option>
</constraint>
</property>
</class>
</constraint-mapping>
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
// src/Acme/BlogBundle/Entity/Author.php
namespace Acme\BlogBundle\Entity;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Mapping\ClassMetadata;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
class Author
{
public static function loadValidatorMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)
{
$metadata->addPropertyConstraint('name', new Assert\Regex(array(
'pattern' => '/^[a-z]+$/i',
'htmlPattern' => '^[a-zA-Z]+$',
)));
}
}
Setting htmlPattern
to false will disable client side validation.
match
type: Boolean
default: true
If true
(or not set), this validator will pass if the given string matches
the given pattern regular expression. However, when this option is set
to false
, the opposite will occur: validation will pass only if the given
string does not match the pattern regular expression.
message
type: string
default: This value is not valid.
This is the message that will be shown if this validator fails.