Validate decimal numbers in JavaScript - IsNumeric

Question

What's the cleanest, most effective way to validate decimal numbers in JavaScript?

Bonus points for:

1. Clarity. Solution should be clean and simple.
2. Cross-platform.

Test cases:

01. IsNumeric('-1')      => true
02. IsNumeric('-1.5')    => true
03. IsNumeric('0')       => true
04. IsNumeric('0.42')    => true
05. IsNumeric('.42')     => true
06. IsNumeric('99,999')  => false
07. IsNumeric('0x89f')   => false
08. IsNumeric('#abcdef') => false
09. IsNumeric('1.2.3')   => false
10. IsNumeric('')        => false
11. IsNumeric('blah')    => false

Answer 1

The accepted answer failed your test #7 and I guess it's because you changed your mind. So this is a response to the accepted answer, with which I had issues.

During some projects I have needed to validate some data and be as certain as possible that it is a javascript numerical value that can be used in mathematical operations.

jQuery, and some other javascript libraries already include such a function, usually called isNumeric. There is also a post on stackoverflow that has been widely accepted as the answer, the same general routine that the afore mentioned libraries are using.

function isNumber(n) {
  return !isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n);
}

First, the code above would return true if the argument was an array of length 1, and that single element was of a type deemed as numeric by the above logic. In my opinion, if it's an array then its not numeric.

To alleviate this problem, I added a check to discount arrays from the logic

function isNumber(n) {
  return Object.prototype.toString.call(n) !== '[object Array]' &&!isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n);
}

Of course, you could also use Array.isArray, jquery $.isArray or prototype Object.isArray instead of Object.prototype.toString.call(n) !== '[object Array]'

My second issue was that Negative Hexadecimal integer literal strings ("-0xA" -> -10) were not being counted as numeric. However, Positive Hexadecimal integer literal strings ("0xA" -> 10) were treated as numeric. I needed both to be valid numeric.

I then modified the logic to take this into account.

function isNumber(n) {
  return Object.prototype.toString.call(n) !== '[object Array]' &&!isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n.toString().replace(/^-/, ''));
}

If you are worried about the creation of the regex each time the function is called then you could rewrite it within a closure, something like this

var isNumber = (function () {
  var rx = /^-/;

  return function (n) {
      return Object.prototype.toString.call(n) !== '[object Array]' &&!isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n.toString().replace(rx, ''));
  };
}());

I then took CMSs +30 test cases and cloned the testing on jsfiddle added my extra test cases and my above described solution.

It may not replace the widely accepted/used answer but if this is more of what you are expecting as results from your isNumeric function then hopefully this will be of some help.

EDIT: As pointed out by Bergi, there are other possible objects that could be considered numeric and it would be better to whitelist than blacklist. With this in mind I would add to the criteria.

I want my isNumeric function to consider only Numbers or Strings

With this in mind, it would be better to use

function isNumber(n) {
  return (Object.prototype.toString.call(n) === '[object Number]' || Object.prototype.toString.call(n) === '[object String]') &&!isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n.toString().replace(/^-/, ''));
}

Test the solutions

var testHelper = function() {

  var testSuite = function() {
    test("Integer Literals", function() {
      ok(isNumber("-10"), "Negative integer string");
      ok(isNumber("0"), "Zero string");
      ok(isNumber("5"), "Positive integer string");
      ok(isNumber(-16), "Negative integer number");
      ok(isNumber(0), "Zero integer number");
      ok(isNumber(32), "Positive integer number");
      ok(isNumber("040"), "Octal integer literal string");
      ok(isNumber(0144), "Octal integer literal");
      ok(isNumber("-040"), "Negative Octal integer literal string");
      ok(isNumber(-0144), "Negative Octal integer literal");
      ok(isNumber("0xFF"), "Hexadecimal integer literal string");
      ok(isNumber(0xFFF), "Hexadecimal integer literal");
      ok(isNumber("-0xFF"), "Negative Hexadecimal integer literal string");
      ok(isNumber(-0xFFF), "Negative Hexadecimal integer literal");
    });

    test("Foating-Point Literals", function() {
      ok(isNumber("-1.6"), "Negative floating point string");
      ok(isNumber("4.536"), "Positive floating point string");
      ok(isNumber(-2.6), "Negative floating point number");
      ok(isNumber(3.1415), "Positive floating point number");
      ok(isNumber(8e5), "Exponential notation");
      ok(isNumber("123e-2"), "Exponential notation string");
    });

    test("Non-Numeric values", function() {
      equals(isNumber(""), false, "Empty string");
      equals(isNumber("        "), false, "Whitespace characters string");
      equals(isNumber("\t\t"), false, "Tab characters string");
      equals(isNumber("abcdefghijklm1234567890"), false, "Alphanumeric character string");
      equals(isNumber("xabcdefx"), false, "Non-numeric character string");
      equals(isNumber(true), false, "Boolean true literal");
      equals(isNumber(false), false, "Boolean false literal");
      equals(isNumber("bcfed5.2"), false, "Number with preceding non-numeric characters");
      equals(isNumber("7.2acdgs"), false, "Number with trailling non-numeric characters");
      equals(isNumber(undefined), false, "Undefined value");
      equals(isNumber(null), false, "Null value");
      equals(isNumber(NaN), false, "NaN value");
      equals(isNumber(Infinity), false, "Infinity primitive");
      equals(isNumber(Number.POSITIVE_INFINITY), false, "Positive Infinity");
      equals(isNumber(Number.NEGATIVE_INFINITY), false, "Negative Infinity");
      equals(isNumber(new Date(2009, 1, 1)), false, "Date object");
      equals(isNumber(new Object()), false, "Empty object");
      equals(isNumber(function() {}), false, "Instance of a function");
      equals(isNumber([]), false, "Empty Array");
      equals(isNumber(["-10"]), false, "Array Negative integer string");
      equals(isNumber(["0"]), false, "Array Zero string");
      equals(isNumber(["5"]), false, "Array Positive integer string");
      equals(isNumber([-16]), false, "Array Negative integer number");
      equals(isNumber([0]), false, "Array Zero integer number");
      equals(isNumber([32]), false, "Array Positive integer number");
      equals(isNumber(["040"]), false, "Array Octal integer literal string");
      equals(isNumber([0144]), false, "Array Octal integer literal");
      equals(isNumber(["-040"]), false, "Array Negative Octal integer literal string");
      equals(isNumber([-0144]), false, "Array Negative Octal integer literal");
      equals(isNumber(["0xFF"]), false, "Array Hexadecimal integer literal string");
      equals(isNumber([0xFFF]), false, "Array Hexadecimal integer literal");
      equals(isNumber(["-0xFF"]), false, "Array Negative Hexadecimal integer literal string");
      equals(isNumber([-0xFFF]), false, "Array Negative Hexadecimal integer literal");
      equals(isNumber([1, 2]), false, "Array with more than 1 Positive interger number");
      equals(isNumber([-1, -2]), false, "Array with more than 1 Negative interger number");
    });
  }

  var functionsToTest = [

    function(n) {
      return !isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n);
    },

    function(n) {
      return !isNaN(n) && !isNaN(parseFloat(n));
    },

    function(n) {
      return !isNaN((n));
    },

    function(n) {
      return !isNaN(parseFloat(n));
    },

    function(n) {
      return typeof(n) != "boolean" && !isNaN(n);
    },

    function(n) {
      return parseFloat(n) === Number(n);
    },

    function(n) {
      return parseInt(n) === Number(n);
    },

    function(n) {
      return !isNaN(Number(String(n)));
    },

    function(n) {
      return !isNaN(+('' + n));
    },

    function(n) {
      return (+n) == n;
    },

    function(n) {
      return n && /^-?\d+(\.\d+)?$/.test(n + '');
    },

    function(n) {
      return isFinite(Number(String(n)));
    },

    function(n) {
      return isFinite(String(n));
    },

    function(n) {
      return !isNaN(n) && !isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n);
    },

    function(n) {
      return parseFloat(n) == n;
    },

    function(n) {
      return (n - 0) == n && n.length > 0;
    },

    function(n) {
      return typeof n === 'number' && isFinite(n);
    },

    function(n) {
      return !Array.isArray(n) && !isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n.toString().replace(/^-/, ''));
    }

  ];


  // Examines the functionsToTest array, extracts the return statement of each function
  // and fills the toTest select element.
  var fillToTestSelect = function() {
    for (var i = 0; i < functionsToTest.length; i++) {
      var f = functionsToTest[i].toString();
      var option = /[\s\S]*return ([\s\S]*);/.exec(f)[1];
      $("#toTest").append('<option value="' + i + '">' + (i + 1) + '. ' + option + '</option>');
    }
  }

  var performTest = function(functionNumber) {
    reset(); // Reset previous test
    $("#tests").html(""); //Clean test results
    isNumber = functionsToTest[functionNumber]; // Override the isNumber global function with the one to test
    testSuite(); // Run the test

    // Get test results
    var totalFail = 0;
    var totalPass = 0;
    $("b.fail").each(function() {
      totalFail += Number($(this).html());
    });
    $("b.pass").each(function() {
      totalPass += Number($(this).html());
    });
    $("#testresult").html(totalFail + " of " + (totalFail + totalPass) + " test failed.");

    $("#banner").attr("class", "").addClass(totalFail > 0 ? "fail" : "pass");
  }

  return {
    performTest: performTest,
    fillToTestSelect: fillToTestSelect,
    testSuite: testSuite
  };
}();


$(document).ready(function() {
  testHelper.fillToTestSelect();
  testHelper.performTest(0);

  $("#toTest").change(function() {
    testHelper.performTest($(this).children(":selected").val());
  });
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="https://rawgit.com/Xotic750/testrunner-old/master/testrunner.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<link href="https://rawgit.com/Xotic750/testrunner-old/master/testrunner.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<h1>isNumber Test Cases</h1>

<h2 id="banner" class="pass"></h2>

<h2 id="userAgent">Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.95 Safari/537.11</h2>

<div id="currentFunction"></div>

<div id="selectFunction">
  <label for="toTest" style="font-weight:bold; font-size:Large;">Select function to test:</label>
  <select id="toTest" name="toTest">
  </select>
</div>

<div id="testCode"></div>

<ol id="tests">
  <li class="pass">
    <strong>Integer Literals <b style="color:black;">(0, 10, 10)</b></strong>

    <ol style="display: none;">
      <li class="pass">Negative integer string</li>

      <li class="pass">Zero string</li>

      <li class="pass">Positive integer string</li>

      <li class="pass">Negative integer number</li>

      <li class="pass">Zero integer number</li>

      <li class="pass">Positive integer number</li>

      <li class="pass">Octal integer literal string</li>

      <li class="pass">Octal integer literal</li>

      <li class="pass">Hexadecimal integer literal string</li>

      <li class="pass">Hexadecimal integer literal</li>
    </ol>
  </li>

  <li class="pass">
    <strong>Foating-Point Literals <b style="color:black;">(0, 6, 6)</b></strong>

    <ol style="display: none;">
      <li class="pass">Negative floating point string</li>

      <li class="pass">Positive floating point string</li>

      <li class="pass">Negative floating point number</li>

      <li class="pass">Positive floating point number</li>

      <li class="pass">Exponential notation</li>

      <li class="pass">Exponential notation string</li>
    </ol>
  </li>

  <li class="pass">
    <strong>Non-Numeric values <b style="color:black;">(0, 18, 18)</b></strong>

    <ol style="display: none;">
      <li class="pass">Empty string: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Whitespace characters string: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Tab characters string: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Alphanumeric character string: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Non-numeric character string: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Boolean true literal: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Boolean false literal: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Number with preceding non-numeric characters: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Number with trailling non-numeric characters: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Undefined value: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Null value: false</li>

      <li class="pass">NaN value: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Infinity primitive: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Positive Infinity: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Negative Infinity: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Date object: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Empty object: false</li>

      <li class="pass">Instance of a function: false</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
</ol>

<div id="main">
  This page contains tests for a set of isNumber functions. To see them, take a look at the source.
</div>

<div>
  <p class="result">Tests completed in 0 milliseconds.
    <br>0 tests of 0 failed.</p>
</div>

Answer 2

The following seems to works fine for many cases:

function isNumeric(num) {
    return (num > 0 || num === 0 || num === '0' || num < 0) && num !== true && isFinite(num);
}

This is built on top of this answer (which is for this answer too): https://stackoverflow.com/a/1561597/1985601

Answer 3

@Joel's answer is pretty close, but it will fail in the following cases:

// Whitespace strings:
IsNumeric(' ')    == true;
IsNumeric('\t\t') == true;
IsNumeric('\n\r') == true;

// Number literals:
IsNumeric(-1)  == false;
IsNumeric(0)   == false;
IsNumeric(1.1) == false;
IsNumeric(8e5) == false;

Some time ago I had to implement an IsNumeric function, to find out if a variable contained a numeric value, regardless of its type, it could be a String containing a numeric value (I had to consider also exponential notation, etc.), a Number object, virtually anything could be passed to that function, I couldn't make any type assumptions, taking care of type coercion (eg. +true == 1; but true shouldn't be considered as "numeric").

I think is worth sharing this set of +30 unit tests made to numerous function implementations, and also share the one that passes all my tests:

function isNumeric(n) {
    return !isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n);
}

P.S. isNaN & isFinite have a confusing behavior due to forced conversion to number. In ES6, Number.isNaN & Number.isFinite would fix these issues. Keep that in mind when using them.

---

Update : Here's how jQuery does it now (2.2-stable):

isNumeric: function(obj) {
    var realStringObj = obj && obj.toString();
    return !jQuery.isArray(obj) && (realStringObj - parseFloat(realStringObj) + 1) >= 0;
}

Update : Angular 4.3:

export function isNumeric(value: any): boolean {
    return !isNaN(value - parseFloat(value));
}

Answer 4

This way seems to work well:

function IsNumeric(input){
    var RE = /^-{0,1}\d*\.{0,1}\d+$/;
    return (RE.test(input));
}

And to test it:

// alert(TestIsNumeric());

function TestIsNumeric(){
    var results = ''
    results += (IsNumeric('-1')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('-1') => true\n";
    results += (IsNumeric('-1.5')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('-1.5') => true\n";
    results += (IsNumeric('0')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('0') => true\n";
    results += (IsNumeric('0.42')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('0.42') => true\n";
    results += (IsNumeric('.42')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('.42') => true\n";
    results += (!IsNumeric('99,999')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('99,999') => false\n";
    results += (!IsNumeric('0x89f')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('0x89f') => false\n";
    results += (!IsNumeric('#abcdef')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('#abcdef') => false\n";
    results += (!IsNumeric('1.2.3')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('1.2.3') => false\n";
    results += (!IsNumeric('')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('') => false\n";
    results += (!IsNumeric('blah')?"Pass":"Fail") + ": IsNumeric('blah') => false\n";

    return results;
}

I borrowed that regex from http://www.codetoad.com/javascript/isnumeric.asp. Explanation:

/^ match beginning of string
-{0,1} optional negative sign
\d* optional digits
\.{0,1} optional decimal point
\d+ at least one digit
$/ match end of string

Answer 5

Here's a lil bit improved version (probably the fastest way out there) that I use instead of exact jQuery's variant, I really don't know why don't they use this one:

function isNumeric(val) {
    return !isNaN(+val) && isFinite(val);
}

The downside of jQuery's version is that if you pass a string with leading numerics and trailing letters like "123abc" the parseFloat | parseInt will extract the numeric fraction out and return 123, BUT, the second guard isFinite will fail it anyway. With the unary + operator it will die on the very first guard since + throws NaN for such hybrids :) A little performance yet I think a solid semantic gain.

Answer 6

Since jQuery 1.7, you can use jQuery.isNumeric():

$.isNumeric('-1');      // true
$.isNumeric('-1.5');    // true
$.isNumeric('0');       // true
$.isNumeric('0.42');    // true
$.isNumeric('.42');     // true
$.isNumeric('0x89f');   // true (valid hexa number)
$.isNumeric('99,999');  // false
$.isNumeric('#abcdef'); // false
$.isNumeric('1.2.3');   // false
$.isNumeric('');        // false
$.isNumeric('blah');    // false

Just note that unlike what you said, 0x89f is a valid number (hexa)