Multiple @Pattern behaving like OR operation

Question

From Multiple Regex @Pattern's for 1 Field? I see how to add multiple patterns, but those are acting as an AND operation.

Is there any way to apply an OR type?

I want to check for an URL pattern and in this sense there are two possiblities: - domain based - IP address based

Both are similar but different so I want to include two patterns.

Federico Piazza · Answer 1 · 2016-06-07T19:31:13.773

3

Following the example post on the link you provided, you could leverage regex OR, so instead of putting multiple patterns working like AND like this:

@Pattern.List({
    @Pattern(regexp = "(?=.*[0-9])", message = "Password must contain one digit."),
    @Pattern(regexp = "(?=.*[a-z])", message = "Password must contain one lowercase letter.")
})
private String password;

You could change it to use one single pattern with regex alternation working as OR:

@Pattern(regexp = "(?=.*[0-9])|(?=.*[a-z])", message = "Password is invalid")
private String password;

I cannot test this code since I don't have a project, but I just use the alternation patterns that works in all regex engines.

edited Jun 07 '16 at 19:31

answered Jun 07 '16 at 19:20

Federico Piazza

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I've also thought on your approach but as the regexs are quite long, I was looking for something more "clean". thanks anyway. – jlanza Jun 08 '16 at 08:22
@jlanza well, that's a different question related to how to shorten a regex. If the answers posted in this question solve your issue, then you should mark your question as resolved and open a new one. Related to shorten your regex, then you could use then this one `(?=.*([0-9]|[a-z]))` – Federico Piazza Jun 08 '16 at 14:48
Thanks for your response. The question was generally related to regex OR and you answered correctly. With my comment I was just saying the this was already in my plans, but I was looking for a Pattern.List but with OR included in it, so I can get different messages, etc. – jlanza Jun 08 '16 at 19:59

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 08 '16 at 10:22

One solution is to write a composed constraint, eg MyURLPattern which internally uses the Hibernate specific feature of "Boolean composition of constraints". In this case you need to also add the @ConstraintComposition(OR) annotation to your composing constraint.

The caveat is that this solution won't be portable between Bean Validation providers.

Multiple @Pattern behaving like OR operation

2 Answers2