I am trying to make sure that the format people input is exactly this :
.match(/\d{1,2}:\d\d\s((AM)|(PM))/)
Meaning that a user could write :
12:30 AM
2:30 PM
But not :
1:2 A
1:30
PM
It needs to be first two digits, followed by a colon, than two more digits, a space, and either AM or PM. But my regex expression isn't that. What am I missing?
What exactly seems to be the problem?
> "1:2 A".match(/\d{1,2}:\d\d\s((AM)|(PM))/);
null
>"12:30 AM".match(/\d{1,2}:\d\d\s((AM)|(PM))/);
["12:30 AM", "AM", "AM", undefined]
However:
You need to ground your expression to the start (^) and end ($) of the string otherwise;
> "foo 12:30 AM foo".match(/\d{1,2}:\d\d\s((AM)|(PM))/);
["12:30 AM", "AM", "AM", undefined]
Look at RegExp.test() instead, which returns a simpler true/false rather than an array.
> /^\d{1,2}:\d\d\s((AM)|(PM))$/.test("12:30 AM");
true
A simpler expression which does the same thing could be /^\d{1,2}:\d{2} [AP]M$/
Assuming that you are checking it on single line input field (and not searching it inside a text area), you should do:
/^\d{1,2}:\d\d\s[AP]M$/
How about something like this:
.match(/([0]?[1-9]|1[0-2])(:)[0-5][0-9]?( )?(AM|PM)/)
If your problem is new line character. You can try:
'12:30
AM'.replace(/\n/, '').match(/\d{1,2}:\d\d\s((AM)|(PM))/)
Combining the ideas of Matt, c0deNinja and my own you should end up with:
/^(0?[1-9]|1[0-2]):[0-5][0-9]\s?[AP]M$/.test(input);
I've tried your code in http://www.regular-expressions.info/javascriptexample.html and it worked.
By the way, you also need to test if the time is valid. Your code now can accept things like this 99:12 AM as if they were correct. I suggest you to use something like this.
\b(1[0-2]|\d):[0-5][0-9]\s([aApP][mM])\b=)
/\b(1[0-2]|\b\d):[0-5][0-9]\s([AP]M)\b/iYour regex seems to be right. Incorporating some ideas above, you could test your string like this with Regex:
^(1[0-2]|\d):[0-5]\d [aApP][mM]$
And the testing code in Javascript:
var regex = /^(1[0-2]|\d):[0-5]\d [aApP][mM]$/g;
var input = "2:30 PM";
if(regex.test(input)) {
var matches = input.match(regex);
for(var match in matches) {
alert(matches[match]);
}
} else {
alert("No matches found!");
}
\d{1,2}:\d\d\s(AM|PM)\smeans "any whitespace character" rather than simply "a space", and except that you probably want your regex to start with^and end with$so that you know you've matched the entire input string. If you're seeing behavior that makes you think your regex does something different, then the problem is probably with the surrounding code. (Perhaps you're misunderstanding what thematchmethod does?)