Javascript validation for "150330-073054"

Question

I want a script to validate "150330-073054"(Only with digit), where '-' is mandatory and can be in any place. Actually I'm not so familiar with javascript.

Answer 1

Not specific to Salesforce but.

var numberToValidate = '150330-073054';
// create array by splitting with "-"
var numbersOnly = numberToValidate.split("-");

// check if has "-"
// check if it has length of two if we spilt it by "-" 
// check the first element in array is a number
// check the second element in array is a number
if(numberToValidate.indexOf('-') != -1 && numbersOnly.length==2 && isFinite(String(numbersOnly[0])) && isFinite(String(numbersOnly[1]))) 
{
   // Number is Valid. Lets Proceed...
} 
else 
{
   // Number is not valid. Show error
}

Answer 2

As an alternate method to Ashwani's answer, you could accomplish this with a regular expression.

In Javascript, the regex would look like this

var testString = '150330-073054';
if(testString.match(/\d+-\d+/) != null){
    // String is correctly formatted
} else {
    // String is not correctly formatted
}

The regex reads as follows:

• This string must have 1 or more digits (\d+, where \d means 'a digit' and + means 'one or more')
• Followed by a '-' (a hypen)
• Followed by 1 or more digits (\d+ again)

This is only a basic code fragment. You'll need to make changes as appropriate to integrate it with your Visualforce page. One example could be that you put this fragment into a function, and call the function using an inline onBlur in an <apex:inputField> tag like so

<apex:inputField onblur="function(this)" />

For a Javascript reference, I personally prefer Mozilla's Javascript guide

I'll leave by saying that this solution (using Javascript to validate data) is best suited for warning a user about an invalid input before they submit it. I believe that best practice is still to do final validation on the server. In your case, this could be done in your controller (or controller extension), or through a validation rule.

For validating in Apex, I'd highly recommend taking Ashwani's answer and modifying it to be written in Apex, rather than trying to use the regex functionality in Apex.