I take full advantage of GMail's wildcard feature (
[email protected]). Unfortunately it seems that most developers don't understand that + is valid in an
email address. This makes trying to unsubscribe a real chore sometimes.
Take TicketMaster for example... immediately you notice that they didn't even bother escaping the
email address, so the text field defaults to "user
[email protected]". Not a problem, we can just add the + manually. Once Submit is clicked, you'll notice the
validation stops you right in your tracks. What now?
Most users would have to further contact TicketMaster and attempt to explain the situation. I opened up FireBug to investigate. That's when I noticed this whopping 74 line
email validation function with so much redundancy it's ridiculous. My favorite check is on line 20, informing the user that his/her
email cannot have more than one @. Unreal. My second favorite part is the TWO regular expressions used!
Imagine... someone was paid money for this... and by the looks of it, they were paid by the line count.
//Validates the
email
function validateOptoutEmail(object) {
var emailStr = object.value;
if(emailStr == '' || emailStr == null) {
alert('
Email can not be empty. Please provide
email');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
return false;
} else if(Trim(emailStr).length == 0) {
alert('
Email can not be empty. Please provide
email');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
return false;
} else {
var atcount=0;
for(var i=0;i<emailStr.length;i++) {
if(emailStr.charAt(i)=='@') atcount++;
}
if(atcount>1) {
alert('Invalid
email.
Email cannot have more than one @');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
return false;
}
if(emailStr.indexOf('.') == -1) {
alert('Invalid
email.
Email must have one dot');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
return false;
}
if(emailStr.indexOf('..')!= -1) {
alert('Invalid
email.
Email cannot have consecutive dots');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
return false;
}
var dotpos=0;
for(var i=dotpos;i< emailStr.length;i++) {
var ichar=emailStr.charAt(i);
if(ichar=='.') dotpos=i;
}
for(var i=dotpos+1;i< emailStr.length;i++) {
var ichar=emailStr.charAt(i);
if((!isNaN(ichar)) || (ichar == '_')) {
alert('Invalid
email.
Email cannot have numbers or _ after dot');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
return false;
}
}
var pattern2=/^([\.-]?\w+)*@\w+([\.-]?\w+)*(\.\w{2,4})+$/;
var pattern1=/^[0-9a-zA-Z\-\_.]+@\w+([\.-]?\w+)*(\.\w{2,4})+$/;
if (pattern1.test(emailStr)) {
if(pattern2.test(emailStr)) {
return true;
} else {
alert('Invalid
email');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
}
return true;
} else {
alert('Invalid
email');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
return false;
}
alert('Invalid
email');
object.value = '';
object.focus();
return false;
}
}
I eventually just put a break point in FireBug and changed the value of the
email address passed into the
validation function. From there everything worked fine...
All that said, how can we get the word out there that + is valid in an
email address? Too often, I'm unable to use the
email address that I want to use for certain web sites because developers simply aren't aware of what constitutes a valid
email address.
