RegularExpression Validation attribute not working correctly

Question

I want to validate a property in my viewmodel to match a regular expression.

Viewmodel:

using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

namespace ProjectName.ViewModels
{
    public class ViewModel
    {
        [Required(ErrorMessage = "error message.")]
        [RegularExpression(@"[a-zA-Z0-9][/\\]$/img", ErrorMessage = "End with '/' or '\\' character.")]
        public string FilePath { get; set; }

        public ViewModel()
        {

        }
    }
}

View:

@model ProjectName.ViewModels.ViewModel
<form asp-action="EditPath" asp-controller="Files" id="EditFilePathForm">
    <div asp-validation-summary="ModelOnly" class="text-danger"></div>
    <div class="col-md-5">
        <div class="form-group">
            <div class="col-md-12">
                <label asp-for="FilePath" class="control-label"></label>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-8">
                <input asp-for="FilePath" class="form-control"/>
                <span asp-validation-for="FilePath" class="text-danger"></span>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-4">
                <p>@Model.FileName</p>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>

    <div class="col-md-12 text-right">
        <hr />
        <button type="button" class="btn btn-default" id="cancelEditFilePathModal" data-dismiss="modal">Annuleren</button>
        <input type="submit" class="btn btn-primary" id="Submit" value="Opslaan"/>
    </div>
</form>

The regular expression should check if the FilePath ends with a alphanumeric character followed by / or \.

Link to Regex on Regex101.com

On Regex101.com this seems to work fine. However when I test this in my application it seems to never match the expression and the error message keeps showing up.

What am I overlooking here?

Solution 1

RegularExpressionAttribute requires the full sting match:

// We are looking for an exact match, not just a search hit. This matches what
// the RegularExpressionValidator control does
return (m.Success && m.Index == 0 && m.Length == stringValue.Length);

So, you need to remove the flags (that is a typo) and use ^.* before your pattern:

@"^.*[a-zA-Z0-9][/\\]$"

Solution 2

On Regex101 [a-zA-Z0-9][/\\]$ is used and in code @"[a-zA-Z0-9][/\\]$/img"

[RegularExpression]: Validates that the data matches the specified regular expression

So you have to invert the regex

.*[^/\\]$

See example

Note

In fact [a-zA-Z0-9][/\\]$/img is invalid regex, since / is not escaped in front of img

Comments

[Wiktor Stribiżew]

Try @".*[a-zA-Z0-9][/\\]$"

[Wiktor Stribiżew]

Yes. That is the main problem, not the typo with the flags.