I want to check an NSString for special characters, i.e. anything except a-z, A-Z and 0-9.
I don't need to check how many special characters are present, or their positions, I just need to know whether a particular string contains any or not. If it does, then I want to be able to display "Error!", or something similar.
For example, jHfd9982 is OK but asdJh992@ is not.
Also, letters with accents, diacritics, etc. should not be allowed.
How would I go about this?
Thanks!
Michael
NSCharacterSet * set = [[NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789"] invertedSet];
if ([aString rangeOfCharacterFromSet:set].location != NSNotFound) {
NSLog(@"This string contains illegal characters");
}
You could also use a regex (this syntax is from RegexKitLite: http://regexkit.sourceforge.net ):
if ([aString isMatchedByRegex:@"[^a-zA-Z0-9]"]) {
NSLog(@"This string contains illegal characters");
}
Here the code you can use it to check the string has any special character or not
NSString *string = <your string>;
NSString *specialCharacterString = @"!~`@#$%^&*-+();:={}[],.<>?\\/\"\'";
NSCharacterSet *specialCharacterSet = [NSCharacterSet
characterSetWithCharactersInString:specialCharacterString];
if ([string.lowercaseString rangeOfCharacterFromSet:specialCharacterSet].length) {
NSLog(@"contains special characters");
}
You want to search NSString using a character set if it cant find any characters in the string then rangeOfCharacterFromSet: will return a range of {NSNotFound, 0}
The character set would be like [NSCharacterSet symbolCharacterSet] or your own set. Note you can also invert character sets so you could have a set of acceptable characters
If you want to remove special characters & numbers from any string (even textfield text), while you are editing, these lines below are quite handy:
#define ACCEPTABLE_CHARACTERS @"!~`@#$%^&*-+();:=_{}[],.<>?\\/|\"\'0123456789"
- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string {
NSCharacterSet *cs = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:ACCEPTABLE_CHARACTERS];
NSString *filtered = [[string componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:cs] componentsJoinedByString:@""];
return (![string isEqualToString:filtered]) ? NO : YES;
}
This code allows only numbers in UITextField input.
- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string {
if ([string rangeOfCharacterFromSet:[[NSCharacterSet decimalDigitCharacterSet] invertedSet]].location != NSNotFound)
return NO;
else
return YES;
}