GANPAT UNIVERSITY

U. V. PATEL COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

2CEIT6PE1
WEB TECHNOLOGY

UNIT 4
Working with Forms

Prepared by: Prof. Megha Patel (Asst. Prof in C.E Dept. )

Regular Expression

 A regular expression is a sequence of characters that forms a search

pattern. When you search for data in a text, you can use this search
pattern to describe what you are searching for.

 A regular expression can be a single character or more complicated

pattern.

 Regular expressions can be used to perform all types of text search

and text replace operations.
 Advantages and uses of Regular expressions
 Regular expressions help in validation of text strings which are of
programmer’s interest.
 It offers a powerful tool for analyzing, searching a pattern and modifying the
text data.
 It helps in searching specific string pattern and extracting matching results
in a flexible manner.
 With the help of in-built regexes functions, easy and simple solutions are
provided for identifying patterns.
 It effectively saves a lot of development time, which are in search of specific
string pattern.
 It helps in important user information validations like email address and
phone numbers.
 Regexes are mostly used for checking password strength and form
validations.
 Syntax
 In PHP, regular expressions are strings composed of delimiters, a pattern
and optional modifiers.
$exp = "/gnu/i";

 In the example above, / is the delimiter, gnu is the pattern that is being
searched for, and i is a modifier that makes the search case-insensitive.
 The delimiter can be any character that is not a letter, number, backslash or
space. The most common delimiter is the forward slash (/), but when your
pattern contains forward slashes it is convenient to choose other delimiters
such as # or ~.

 Note: By default, regular expressions are case sensitive.

 Regular Expression Modifiers
 Modifiers can change how a search is performed.

Modifier Description

i Performs a case-insensitive search

m Performs a multiline search (patterns that search for the

beginning or end of a string will match the beginning or
end of each line)

u Enables correct matching of UTF-8 encoded patterns

 Regular Expression Patterns
 Brackets are used to find a range of characters

xpression Description

[abc] Find one character from the options between the

brackets

[^abc] Find any character NOT between the brackets

[0-9] Find one character from the range 0 to 9

 Metacharacters
 Metacharacters are characters with a special meaning.
Metacharacter Description

| Find a match for any one of the patterns separated by | as in:

cat|dog|fish
. Find just one instance of any character
^ Finds a match as the beginning of a string as in: ^Hello

$ Finds a match at the end of the string as in: World$

\d Find a digit
\s Find a whitespace character
\b Find a match at the beginning of a word like this: \bWORD, or at the end
of a word like this: WORD\b

\uxxxx Find the Unicode character specified by the hexadecimal number xxxx
 Quantifiers
Quantifiers define quantities.
Quantifier Description
n+ Matches any string that contains at least one n

n* Matches any string that contains zero or more

occurrences of n
n? Matches any string that contains zero or one
occurrences of n
n{x} Matches any string that contains a sequence of X n's

n{x,y} Matches any string that contains a sequence of X to

Y n's
n{x,} Matches any string that contains a sequence of at least
X n's
 Quantifiers

Note: If your expression needs to search for one of the

special characters you can use a backslash ( \ ) to escape
them. For example, to search for one or more question
marks you can use the following expression: $pattern =
'/\?+/';
 Grouping
 You can use parentheses ( ) to apply quantifiers to entire patterns. They also can be
used to select parts of the pattern to be used as a match.
Regular Expression Matches
gnu The string “gnu”
^gnu The string starts with “gnu”
gnu$ The string ends with “gnu”
^gnu$ The string where “gnu” is alone on a string.
[abc] a,b or c
[a-z] Any lowercase letter
[^A-Z] Any letter which is NOT a uppercase letter
(gif|png) Either “gif” or “png”
[a-z]+ One or more lowercase letters
^[a-zA-Z0-9]{1, }$ Any word with at least one number or one letter
([ax])([by]) ab, ay, xb, xy
[^A-Za-z0-9] Any symbol other than a letter or other than number
([A-Z]{3}|[0-9]{5}) Matches three letters or five numbers
 Regular Expression Functions
 PHP provides a variety of functions that allow you to use regular expressions. The
preg_match(), preg_match_all() and preg_replace() functions are some of the most
commonly used ones:

Function Definition
This function searches for a specific pattern against some string. It
preg_match()
returns true if pattern exists and false otherwise.

This function searches for all the occurrences of string pattern against
preg_match_all()
the string. This function is very useful for search and replace.

This function searches for specific string pattern and replace the
ereg_replace()
original string with the replacement string, if found.

The function behaves like ereg_replace() provided the search for

eregi_replace()
pattern is not case sensitive.

This function behaves like ereg_replace() function provided the regular

preg_replace()
expressions can be used in the pattern and replacement strings.
 Regular Expression Functions

The function behaves like the PHP split() function. It splits the
preg_split()
string by regular expressions as its parameters.

This function searches all elements which matches the regular

preg_grep()
expression pattern and returns the output array.

This function takes string and quotes in front of every character

preg_quote()
which matches the regular expression.

This function searches for a string which is specified by a pattern

ereg()
and returns true if found, otherwise returns false.

This function behaves like ereg() function provided the search is

eregi()
not case sensitive.
 Example-1

 Use a regular expression to do a case-insensitive search for "gnu"

in a string

<?php
$str = "Visit Gnu";
$pattern = "/gnu/i";
echo preg_match($pattern, $str); // Outputs 1
?>
 Example-2
 Use a regular expression to do a case-insensitive count of the
number of occurrences of "ain" in a string
Using preg_match_all()
The preg_match_all() function will tell you how many matches were
found for a pattern in a string.

<?php
$str = "The rain in SPAIN falls mainly on the plains.";
$pattern = "/ain/i";
echo preg_match_all($pattern, $str); // Outputs 4
?>
 Example-3
 Use a case-insensitive regular expression to replace Microsoft
with GNU in a string:

Using preg_replace()
The preg_replace() function will replace all of the matches of the pattern
in a string with another string.

<?php
$str = "Visit Microsoft!";
$pattern = "/microsoft/i";
echo preg_replace($pattern, “GNU", $str);
?>
 Example-4
 Use grouping to search for the word "banana" by looking for ba
followed by two instances of na:

<?php
$str = "Apples and bananas.";
$pattern = "/ba(na){2}/i";
echo preg_match($pattern, $str); // Outputs 1
?>
 Example-5
 Name Validation
<?php
$regex = '/^[a-zA-Z ]*$/';
$nameString = 'Hemant Shah';
// Use preg_match() function to search string pattern
if(preg_match($regex, $nameString)) {
echo("Name string matching with regular expression");
}
else {
echo("Only letters and white space allowed in name string");
}
?>
 Example-6
 Mobile Validation
<?php
$regex = '/^[0-9]{10}$/';
$nameString = '9734567556';
// Use preg_match() function to search string pattern
if(preg_match($regex, $nameString)) {
echo("Correct Number");
}
else {
echo("Incorrect");
}
?>
 Example-7
 Password Validation
<?php
$regex = '/^(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[A-Z]).{6,8}$/';
$nameString = 'D2g6';
if(preg_match($regex, $nameString)) {
echo("Correct");
}
else {
echo("Incorrect");
}
?>
 Example-8
 Email Validation
<?php
$regex='/^[a-z0-9_]+@[a-z]+.[a-z]{2,3}+$/';
$nameString = '[email protected]';
if(preg_match($regex, $nameString)) {
echo("Correct Email");
}
else {
echo("Incorrect");
}
?>
 Example-9
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html> Array (
<body> [0] =>1970
<?php [1] => 01
$date = "1970-01-01 00:00:00"; [2] => 01
$pattern = "/[-\s:]/";
$components = preg_split($pattern, [3] => 00
$date); [4] => 00
print_r($components);
?> [5] => 00 )
</body>
</html>
 Example-10
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

<?php
$input = [
"Red", Array ( [1] => Pink [4] => Purple )
"Pink",
"Green",
"Blue",
"Purple"
];

$result = preg_grep("/^p/i", $input);

print_r($result);
?>

</body>
</html>