ASP.net WebForms Regex validator control, validationexpression with " and '

Question

Im having quite some trouble with figuring out how to handle this case.. I have a RegExpValidator control that takes a regexp as a value for an attribute (this is in my markup/html code).. and this regexp contains both ' and "..which then of course would cause quite alot of confusion for the .Net compiler and mostlikelyt for the browsers html-engine as well.. So.. My question is.. is there anyway to use a regexp like that inside the html/markup?

Here is the current code:

<MyCustomControl:RegularExpressionValidator Runat="server" ID="EmailRegExpValidator" ResourceID="UserAdministration.EmailRegularExpressionValidator" ControlToValidate="EmailTextBox" ValidationExpression="^((?>[a-zA-Z\d!#$%&'*+\-/=?^_`{|}~]+\x20*|"((?=[\x01-\x7f])[^"\\]|\\[\x01-\x7f])*"\x20*)*(?<angle><))?((?!\.)(?>\.?[a-zA-Z\d!#$%&'*+\-/=?^_`{|}~]+)+|"((?=[\x01-\x7f])[^"\\]|\\[\x01-\x7f])*")@(((?!-)[a-zA-Z\d\-]+(?<!-)\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}|\[(((?(?<!\[)\.)(25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d?\d)){4}|[a-zA-Z\d\-]*[a-zA-Z\d]:((?=[\x01-\x7f])[^\\\[\]]|\\[\x01-\x7f])+)\])(?(angle)>)$" Display="Dynamic"/>

The control is most likely not that custom.. and some how inherits the default regexp validator.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Because the value side is surrounded by double quotes, you can't use a double quote inside the value. however you can use the unicode equivalent of a double quote \x22 inside the value.

So your ValidationExpression attribute value would look something like:

ValidationExpression="^((?>[a-zA-Z\d!#$%&'*+\-/=?^_`{|}~]+\x20*|\x22((?=[\x01-\x7f])[^\x22\\]|\\[\x01-\x7f])*\x22\x20*)*(?<angle><))?((?!\.)(?>\.?[a-zA-Z\d!#$%&'*+\-/=?^_`{|}~]+)+|\x22((?=[\x01-\x7f])[^\x22\\]|\\[\x01-\x7f])*\x22)@(((?!-)[a-zA-Z\d\-]+(?<!-)\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}|\[(((?(?<!\[)\.)(25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d?\d)){4}|[a-zA-Z\d\-]*[a-zA-Z\d]:((?=[\x01-\x7f])[^\\\[\]]|\\[\x01-\x7f])+)\])(?(angle)>)$"