Freehill Media: What's New

Very Simple Regular Expressions (Starting with Numbers)

dallasclark — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:06:38 +0000

If you want to validate strings, text, or whatever it may be, validating with Regular Expression is an easy way to determine that the data is valid. Whether it’s an application or a web-site, you can validate users’ input to ensure it has met all requirements before continuing, or validate your own data.

^123$

This small example checks whether the data is simply ‘123′, anything else will fail. We use the ‘^’ symbol to show where the beginning of the data is, and the ‘$’ symbol to show where the end of the data is.

^[0-9]$

The example above will test the data to ensure it is a single number between 0 to 9. ‘0′, ‘1′, ‘2′, ‘3′, and ‘9′ are examples of data that will pass the above regular expression. ‘a’, ‘10′, and ‘ 1′ are all examples of data that will fail.

So what if we wanted 2 numbers?

^([0-9]|[0-9][0-9])$

The example above will match 0 to 9 or 00 to 99. The ‘|’ symbol simply specifies ‘or’ so in affect we have [0-9] for 0 to 9 | [0-9][0-9] for 00 to 99. Because we are using the ‘|’ symbol, we need to wrap brackets around our statement to show where the ‘or’ statement begins and where it ends.

Now lets work with time.

^(1[0-2]|(0?[1-9])):[0-5][0-9]$

12 hour format is pretty damn simple now that you know the basics. The first part ‘1[0-2]‘ means 1 followed by 0 to 2 (for example 10, 11, 12), ‘or’ ‘(0*[1-9])’ for 1 to 9 or 01 to 09. The ‘*’ means whatever character before it is optional, so the ‘0′ is optional but can only occur once if it was there.

So this will cover 1 to 9, 01 to 09, and 10, 11, 12. The ‘:’ symbol is exactly that, and the last two parts ‘[0-5][0-9]‘ means 00 to 59. ‘1:15′, ‘9:59′, and ‘12:39′ will all pass, but ‘00:38′, ‘13:32′, and ‘3:83′ will all fail.

I’m on a quest to make the ultimate regular expression for date and time, but there’s no use giving you the whole thing without first telling you how to get there. Keep an eye on my blog for more posts to come.

I must also note that the above and future examples are Perl-derivative regular expressions. Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Python, Ruby, Microsoft’s .NET Framework, and the W3C’s XML Schema all use regular expression syntax similar to Perl’s. Some languages and tools such as PHP support multiple regular expression flavours.

Resources
* RegExp - Mozilla Developer Center
* Regular Expression - Wikipedia

Things are getting busy towards the festive season.

dallasclark — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:06:09 +0000

We’re growing and with growth comes a bigger team and possibly a move to a bigger office. We’re very welcoming on new clients but very regularly our phone lines are quite impossible to get through.

We suggest you make an online enquiry if you wish to become one of our very many prospect clients or otherwise leave a voicemail message if you cannot get through by phone. We normally call back within 24 hours so rest assure that your enquiry will get answered promptly.

We want to thank you all for your patience, and look forward to a working relationship.

- Freehill Media Management

We said ‘Good Bye’ to our old phone number

dallasclark — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:25:11 +0000

Just a quick memo to everyone that our phone number has changed to:

(07) 3040 2892

Please don’t forget to update our contact details in your Address Books.

A Redesign for the Freehill Media Site.

admin — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 10:41:08 +0000

Welcome to our brand new, all improved website. It was very hard putting time aside from our clients’ projects but we did it (out of office hours too). We are very proud of this new design and exciting look for Freehill Media as we go full-speed ahead into our 2nd year of business.

We’ve had some great innovations appear from our team over the past year inventing new systems, frameworks and solving complicated issues. Our newest product Freedom can be included in any new or existing website.

Cheers to the team for another year ahead !