Validate email address in JavaScript?

There's something you have to understand the second you decide to use a regular expression to validate emails: It's probably not a good idea. Once you have come to terms with that, there are many implementations out there that can get you halfway there, this article sums them up nicely.

In short, however, the only way to be absolutely, positively sure that what the user entered is in fact an email is to actually send an email and see what happens. Other than that it's all just guesses.

Just for completeness, here you have another RFC 2822 compliant regex

The official standard is known as RFC 2822. It describes the syntax that valid email addresses must adhere to. You can (but you shouldn't — read on) implement it with this regular expression:

(?:[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*|"(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21\x23-\x5b\x5d-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])*")@(?:(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?|\[(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?|[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21-\x5a\x53-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])+)\])

(...) We get a more practical implementation of RFC 2822 if we omit the syntax using double quotes and square brackets. It will still match 99.99% of all email addresses in actual use today.

[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?

A further change you could make is to allow any two-letter country code top level domain, and only specific generic top level domains. This regex filters dummy email addresses like [email protected]. You will need to update it as new top-level domains are added.

[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+(?:[A-Z]{2}|com|org|net|gov|mil|biz|info|mobi|name|aero|jobs|museum)\b

So even when following official standards, there are still trade-offs to be made. Don't blindly copy regular expressions from online libraries or discussion forums. Always test them on your own data and with your own applications.

_{Emphasis mine}

I've slightly modified Jaymon's answer for people who want really simple validation in the form of:

[email protected]

The regular expression:

/\S+@\S+\.\S+/

Example JavaScript function:

function validateEmail(email) 
{
    var re = /\S+@\S+\.\S+/;
    return re.test(email);
}

Wow, there are lots of complexity here. If all you want to do is just catch the most obvious syntax errors, I would do something like this:

\S+@\S+

It usually catches the most obvious errors that the user makes and assures that the form is mostly right, which is what JavaScript validation is all about.

HTML5 itself has email validation. If your browser supports HTML5 then you can use the following code.

<form><input type="email" placeholder="[email protected]">
    <input type="submit">
</form>

jsFiddle link

Correct validation of email address in compliance with the RFCs is not something that can be achieved with a one-liner regular expression. An article with the best solution I've found in PHP is What is a valid email address?. Obviously, it has been ported to Java. I think the function is too complex to be ported and used in JavaScript.

A good practice is to validate your data on the client, but double-check the validation on the server. With this in mind, you can simply check whether a string looks like a valid email address on the client and perform the strict check on the server.

Here's the JavaScript function I use to check if a string looks like a valid mail address:

function looksLikeMail(str) {
    var lastAtPos = str.lastIndexOf('@');
    var lastDotPos = str.lastIndexOf('.');
    return (lastAtPos < lastDotPos && lastAtPos > 0 && str.indexOf('@@') == -1 && lastDotPos > 2 && (str.length - lastDotPos) > 2);
}

Explanation:

• lastAtPos < lastDotPos: Last @ should be before last . since @ cannot be part of server name (as far as I know).

• lastAtPos > 0: There should be something (the email username) before the last @.

• str.indexOf('@@') == -1: There should be no @@ in the address. Even if @ appears as the last character in email username, it has to be quoted so " would be between that @ and the last @ in the address.

• lastDotPos > 2: There should be at least three characters before the last dot, for example [email protected].

• (str.length - lastDotPos) > 2: There should be enough characters after the last dot to form a two-character domain. I'm not sure if the brackets are necessary.

JavaScript can match a regular expression:

emailAddress.match( / some_regex /);

Here's an RFC22 regular expression for emails:

^((?>[a-zA-Z\d!#$%&'*+\-/=?^_`{|}~]+\x20*|"((?=[\x01-\x7f])[^"\\]|\\[\x01-\x7f])*
"\x20*)*(?<angle><))?((?!\.)(?>\.?[a-zA-Z\d!#$%&'*+\-/=?^_`{|}~]+)+|"((?=[\x01-\x
7f])[^"\\]|\\[\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)>)$

In modern browsers you can build on top of @Sushil's answer with pure JavaScript and the DOM:

function validateEmail(value) {
  var input = document.createElement('input');

  input.type = 'email';
  input.value = value;

  return input.checkValidity();
}

I've put together an example in the fiddle http://jsfiddle.net/boldewyn/2b6d5/. If you combine this with a Modernizr feature detection, it frees you from the regular expression massacre.

Don't validate, just send a confirmation email instead.

All email addresses contain an 'at' symbol. Test that necessary condition

email.indexOf("@") > 0

Don't bother with anything more complicated. Even if you could perfectly determine whether an email is RFC-syntactically valid, that wouldn't tell you whether it belongs to the person who supplied it. That's what really matters.

To test that, send a validation message.

This is the correct RFC822 version.

function checkEmail(emailAddress) {
  var sQtext = '[^\\x0d\\x22\\x5c\\x80-\\xff]';
  var sDtext = '[^\\x0d\\x5b-\\x5d\\x80-\\xff]';
  var sAtom = '[^\\x00-\\x20\\x22\\x28\\x29\\x2c\\x2e\\x3a-\\x3c\\x3e\\x40\\x5b-\\x5d\\x7f-\\xff]+';
  var sQuotedPair = '\\x5c[\\x00-\\x7f]';
  var sDomainLiteral = '\\x5b(' + sDtext + '|' + sQuotedPair + ')*\\x5d';
  var sQuotedString = '\\x22(' + sQtext + '|' + sQuotedPair + ')*\\x22';
  var sDomain_ref = sAtom;
  var sSubDomain = '(' + sDomain_ref + '|' + sDomainLiteral + ')';
  var sWord = '(' + sAtom + '|' + sQuotedString + ')';
  var sDomain = sSubDomain + '(\\x2e' + sSubDomain + ')*';
  var sLocalPart = sWord + '(\\x2e' + sWord + ')*';
  var sAddrSpec = sLocalPart + '\\x40' + sDomain; // complete RFC822 email address spec
  var sValidEmail = '^' + sAddrSpec + '$'; // as whole string

  var reValidEmail = new RegExp(sValidEmail);

  if (reValidEmail.test(emailAddress)) {
    return true;
  }

  return false;
}

This was stolen from http://codesnippets.joyent.com/posts/show/1917

email = $('email');
filter = /^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-])+\@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+\.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/;
if (filter.test(email.value)) {
  // Yay! valid
  return true;
}
else
  {return false;}

Simply check out if the entered email address is valid or not using HTML.

<input type="email"/>

There isn't any need to write a function for validation.

You should not use regular expressions to validate an input string to check if it's an email. It's too complicated and would not cover all the cases.

Now since you can only cover 90% of the cases, write something like:

function isPossiblyValidEmail(txt) {
   return txt.length > 0 && txt.indexOf('@')>0;
}

You can refine it. For instance, 'aaa@' is valid. But overall you get the gist. And don't get carried away... A simple 90% solution is better than 100% solution that does not work.

The world needs simpler code...

Do this (case insensitive)

[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?

Why? It's based on RFC 2822, which is a standard ALL email addresses MUST adhere to.

Here's an example of it being use in JavaScript

var emailCheck=/^[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?$/i;
console.log( emailCheck.test('[email protected]') );

Note: Technically some emails can include quotes in the section before the @ symbol with escape characters inside the quotes (so you're email user can be obnoxious and contain stuff like @ and "... as long as it's written in quotes) NOBODY DOES THIS EVER. It's obsolete. But, it IS included in the true RFC 2822 standard, and omitted here.

More info: http://www.regular-expressions.info/email.html

This is how node-validator do it:

/^(?:[\w\!\#\$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`\{\|\}\~]+\.)*[\w\!\#\$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`\{\|\}\~]+@(?:(?:(?:[a-zA-Z0-9](?:[a-zA-Z0-9\-](?!\.)){0,61}[a-zA-Z0-9]?\.)+[a-zA-Z0-9](?:[a-zA-Z0-9\-](?!$)){0,61}[a-zA-Z0-9]?)|(?:\[(?:(?:[01]?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.){3}(?:[01]?\d{1,2}|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\]))$/

It's hard to get an email validator 100% correct. The only really way to get it correct would be to send a test email to the account. That said, there are a few basic checks that can help make sure that you're getting something reasonable.

Some things to improve:

Instead of new RegExp, just try writing the regexp out like this:

if (reg.test(/@/))

Second, check to make sure that a period comes after the @ sign, and make sure that there are characters between the @s and periods.

Here is a very good discussion about using regular expressions to validate email addresses; "Comparing E-mail Address Validating Regular Expressions"

Here is the current top expression, that is JavaScript compatible, for reference purposes:

/^[-a-z0-9~!$%^&*_=+}{\'?]+(\.[-a-z0-9~!$%^&*_=+}{\'?]+)*@([a-z0-9_][-a-z0-9_]*(\.[-a-z0-9_]+)*\.(aero|arpa|biz|com|coop|edu|gov|info|int|mil|museum|name|net|org|pro|travel|mobi|[a-z][a-z])|([0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}))(:[0-9]{1,5})?$/i

Apparently, that's it:

/^([\w\!\#$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+\.)*[\w\!\#$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+@((((([a-z0-9]{1}[a-z0-9\-]{0,62}[a-z0-9]{1})|[a-z])\.)+[a-z]{2,6})|(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}(\:\d{1,5})?)$/i

Taken from http://fightingforalostcause.net/misc/2006/compare-email-regex.php on Oct 1 '10.

But, of course, that's ignoring internationalization.

My knowledge of regular expressions is not that good. That's why I check the general syntax with a simple regular expression first and check more specific options with other functions afterwards. This may not be not the best technical solution, but this way I'm way more flexible and faster.

The most common errors I've come across are spaces (especially at the beginning and end) and occasionally a double dot.

function check_email(val){
    if(!val.match(/\S+@\S+\.\S+/)){ // Jaymon's / Squirtle's solution
        // Do something
        return false;
    }
    if( val.indexOf(' ')!=-1 || val.indexOf('..')!=-1){
        // Do something
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}

check_email('check@thiscom'); // Returns false
check_email('[email protected]'); // Returns false
check_email(' [email protected]'); // Returns false
check_email('[email protected]'); // Returns true

Use this code inside your validator function:

var emailID = document.forms["formName"]["form element id"].value;
    atpos = emailID.indexOf("@");
    dotpos = emailID.lastIndexOf(".");
    if (atpos < 1 || ( dotpos - atpos < 2 ))
    {
        alert("Please enter correct email ID")
        return false;
    }

Else you can use jQuery. Inside rules define:

eMailId: {
    required: true,
    email: true
}

Sectrean's solution works great, but it was failing my linter. So I added some escapes:

function validateEmail(email){ 
     var re = /^(([^<>()[]\\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()[]\\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|(\".+\"))@(([[0-9]{1,3}\‌​.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$/; 
     return re.test(email); 
}

<pre>
**The personal_info part contains the following ASCII characters.
1.Uppercase (A-Z) and lowercase (a-z) English letters.
2.Digits (0-9).
3.Characters ! # $ % & ' * + - / = ? ^ _ ` { | } ~
4.Character . ( period, dot or fullstop) provided that it is not the first or last character and it will not come one after the other.**
</pre>
*Example of valid email id*
<pre>
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
</pre>
<pre>
xxxx.ourearth.com [@ is not present] 
[email protected] [ tld (Top Level domain) can not start with dot "." ]
@you.me.net [ No character before @ ]
[email protected] [ ".b" is not a valid tld ]
[email protected] [ tld can not start with dot "." ]
[email protected] [ an email should not be start with "." ]
xxxxx()*@gmail.com [ here the regular expression only allows character, digit, underscore and dash ]
[email protected] [double dots are not allowed
</pre>
**javascript mail code**

    function ValidateEmail(inputText)
    {
    var mailformat = /^\w+([\.-]?\w+)*@\w+([\.-]?\w+)*(\.\w{2,3})+$/;
    if(inputText.value.match(mailformat))
    {
    document.form1.text1.focus();
    return true;
    }
    else
    {
    alert("You have entered an invalid email address!");
    document.form1.text1.focus();
    return false;
    }
    }

In contrast to squirtle, here is a complex solution, but it does a mighty fine job of validating emails properly:

function isEmail(email) { 
    return /^((([a-z]|\d|[!#\$%&'\*\+\-\/=\?\^_`{\|}~]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])+(\.([a-z]|\d|[!#\$%&'\*\+\-\/=\?\^_`{\|}~]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])+)*)|((\x22)((((\x20|\x09)*(\x0d\x0a))?(\x20|\x09)+)?(([\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]|\x21|[\x23-\x5b]|[\x5d-\x7e]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(\\([\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0d-\x7f]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF]))))*(((\x20|\x09)*(\x0d\x0a))?(\x20|\x09)+)?(\x22)))@((([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])([a-z]|\d|-|\.|_|~|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])*([a-z]|\d|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])))\.)+(([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])|(([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])([a-z]|\d|-|\.|_|~|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])*([a-z]|[\u00A0-\uD7FF\uF900-\uFDCF\uFDF0-\uFFEF])))$/i.test(email);
} 

Use like so:

if (isEmail('[email protected]') == true){ console.log('This is email is valid'); }

<form name="validation" onSubmit="return checkbae()">
    Please input a valid email address:<br />

    <input type="text" size=18 name="emailcheck">
    <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

<script language="JavaScript1.2">
    var testresults
    function checkemail(){
        var str = document.validation.emailcheck.value
        var filter = /^([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$/i
        if (filter.test(str))
            testresults = true
        else {
            alert("Please input a valid email address!")
            testresults = false
        }
        return (testresults)
    }
</script>

<script>
    function checkbae(){
        if (document.layers || document.getElementById || document.all)
            return checkemail()
        else
            return true
    }
</script>

The regular expression provided by Microsoft within ASP.NET MVC is

/^[\w-]+(\.[\w-]+)*@([a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*?\.[a-z]{2,6}|(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3})(:\d{4})?$/

Which I post here in case it's flawed - though it's always been perfect for my needs.

If you're using Closure you can use the built-in goog.format.EmailAddress type:

http://docs.closure-library.googlecode.com/git/class_goog_format_EmailAddress.html

For example:

goog.format.EmailAddress.isValidAddrSpec("[email protected]")

Note that by reading the source (linked above) you can see the comments state that IDN are not supported and that it only aims to cover most addresses:

// This is a fairly naive implementation, but it covers 99% of use cases.
// For more details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Syntax
// TODO(mariakhomenko): we should also be handling i18n domain names as per
// http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name

One of my coworker shared this regex with me. I like it a lot.

function isValidEmailAddress (email) {
    var validEmail = false;
    if (email) {
        email = email.trim().toLowerCase();
        var pattern = /^[\w-']+(\.[\w-']+)*@([a-zA-Z0-9]+[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)*?\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6}|(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3})(:\d{4})?$/;
        validEmail = pattern.exec(email);
    }

    return validEmail;
}

if (typeof String.prototype.trim !== 'function') {
    String.prototype.trim = function() {
        return this.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, '');
    };
}

function validatecontactEmail(email) { 

 if (/^\w+([\.-]?\w+)*@\w+([\.-]?\w+)*(\.\w{2,3})+$/.test(email))  
  {  
    return (true)  
  }  

    return (false)  

}