Prevent use of symbols in usernames

[Joshua Clinard]

I don't want people to be able to sign up with symbols in their usernames, like the forwards slash, and the paranthases, and so on. The only symbol I want people to be able to use in thier username is the underscore. No periods, commas, or other symbols or punctuation marks. Is there a way to prevent this?

[Scott MacVicar]

open register.php

look for

PHP Code:

  if (strlen($username)<$minuserlength) {
    eval("standarderror("".gettemplate("error_usernametooshort")."");");
    exit;
  } elseif (strlen($username)>$maxuserlength) {
    eval("standarderror("".gettemplate("error_usernametoolong")."");");
    exit;
  } 


below it add

PHP Code:

  if(!preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z_0-9]+$/", $username)) {
    eval("standarderror("Invalid Characters you can only use a-z, 1-9 or an underscore in your username.");");
    exit;
  } 


[Joshua Clinard]

Thanks. I'm just curious, but has this been tested?

[Scott MacVicar]

Yeah it will work, it allow characters for a-z A-Z underscore and numbers in the range 0-9.

Hence the

a-zA-Z_0-9

but i believe that

PHP Code:

if (!preg_match("/^\w+$/", $username)) {
  eval("standarderror("Invalid Characters you can only use a-z, 1-9 or an underscore in your username.");");
  exit;
} 


as \w represents word in perl thought it depends on locale settings

[Joshua Clinard]

I didn't realize that this hack was also going to prevent the use of spaces. I don't want it to do that. Is there anyway to fix that? If I just typed in a space after the _ would that do it? By the way, I don't get what you were trying to say in your last post! Can you tell me what that means?

[Joshua Clinard]

Can someone please help? I want to get this fixed.

[StarBuG]

ever tried to use the html code for space in that definition?
"& n b s p ;" or "& # 1 6 0 ;" (without the spaces and "!)

like

PHP Code:

if(!preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z_0-9& n b s p ;]+$/", $username)) {
    eval("standarderror("Invalid Characters you can only use a-z, 1-9 or an underscore in your username.");");
    exit;
  } 


(also without spaces of course)

don?t know if it works but it is woth a try

Greetings

StarBuG

[Joshua Clinard]

The answer is to add a space after 9 in this code

PHP Code:

[a-zA-Z_0-9 ] 


This has been tested. Thanks to Hoojx for help with this.

[Scott MacVicar]

this works as well

PHP Code:

if (!preg_match("/^w+$/", $username)) {
  eval("standarderror("Invalid Characters you can only use a-z, 1-9 or an underscore in your username.");");
  exit;
} 


[Sion]

How can I allow a dash (-) aswell? Coz when I added it it didn't seem to work!

--Sion