Annotation for checking that an email address is valid in ASP.NET

Question

I am trying to validate that an email address entered by the user is a valid email address. I have tried to use the following data annotation which I read should work:

    [Required]
    [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]
    [DisplayName("Email Address")]
    public string Email { get; set; }

So as you can see I have used the [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]. This does not seem to work. Is there any other method that I can use to check that an email address is valid. I have spent the last 108 hours working on this and I feel that it is about time I move on.

Have you seen the [`EmailAddressAttribute`](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.dataannotations.emailaddressattribute%28v=vs.110%29.aspx)? — Andrew Whitaker, Sep 01 '14 at 16:11
Seems very similar to [Uses of Datatype.EmailAddress in asp/.net/mvc](http://stackoverflow.com/q/19425916/33051) — Zhaph - Ben Duguid, Sep 01 '14 at 16:45

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 01 '14 at 16:13

1

You can use regexp validation

[RegularExpression("/^[_A-Za-z0-9-\\+]+(\\.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+)*@[A-Za-z0-9-]+(\\.[A-Za-z0-9]+)*(\\.[A-Za-z]{2,})$/", ErrorMessage = "Lorem ipsum bla bla")]

answered Sep 01 '14 at 16:13

Sylwekqaz

329
2
9

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 01 '14 at 16:27

If you use the following mark-up it will render an html 5 input type email:

Markup

 @Html.EditorFor(m => m.Email)
 @Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Email)

Rendered output

<input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" 
 data-val-required="The Email Address field is required." 
 id="Email" name="Email" type="email" value="">

This will prevent invalid submission for html 5 compliant browsers.

jsFiddle

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 01 '14 at 16:12

0

The System.Net.Mail.MailAddress class can handle this. It will throw a FormatException if the address is in an unrecognized format. See this on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/591bk9e8(v=vs.110).aspx

answered Sep 01 '14 at 16:12

Tim

126
1
5

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:49

As per this answer:

Datatype.Emailaddress derives from DataTypeAttribute and adds client-side e-mail validation you also need to set <% Html.EnableClientValidation(); %> in your corresponding view.

As hutchonoid points out, this will generate an HTML5 <input type="email" ... /> input field, which will allow the browser to pre-validate for you as well as provide the "Email" keyboard on mobile devices.

For server-side valdiation you could use the DataAnnotations library by using EmailAddressAttribute:

using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; 

[Required]
[EmailAddress]
[DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]
[DisplayName("Email Address")]
public String Email { get; set; }

Alternatively, you could use the RegularExpressionAttribute and get both client and server side validation, but without the HTML5 field rendering.

Annotation for checking that an email address is valid in ASP.NET

4 Answers4