Validating file types by regular expression

Question

I have a .NET webform that has a file upload control that is tied to a regular expression validator. This validator needs to validate that only certain filetypes should be allowed for upload (jpg,gif,doc,pdf)

The current regular expression that does this is:

^(([a-zA-Z]:)|(\\{2}\w+)\$?)(\\(\w[\w].*))(.jpg|.JPG|.gif|.GIF|.doc|.DOC|.pdf|.PDF)$

However this does not seem to be working... can anyone give me a little reg ex help?

Solution 1

Your regex seems a bit too complex in my opinion. Also, remember that the dot is a special character meaning "any character". The following regex should work (note the escaped dots):

^.*\.(jpg|JPG|gif|GIF|doc|DOC|pdf|PDF)$

You can use a tool like Expresso to test your regular expressions.

Solution 2

^.+\.(?:(?:[dD][oO][cC][xX]?)|(?:[pP][dD][fF]))$

Will accept .doc, .docx, .pdf files having a filename of at least one character:

^           = beginning of string
.+          = at least one character (any character)
\.          = dot ('.')
(?:pattern) = match the pattern without storing the match)
[dD]        = any character in the set ('d' or 'D')
[xX]?       = any character in the set or none 
              ('x' may be missing so 'doc' or 'docx' are both accepted)
|           = either the previous or the next pattern
$           = end of matched string

Warning! Without enclosing the whole chain of extensions in (?:), an extension like .docpdf would pass.

You can test regular expressions at http://www.regextester.com/

Solution 3

Are you just looking to verify that the file is of a given extension? You can simplify what you are trying to do with something like this:

(.*?)\.(jpg|gif|doc|pdf)$

Then, when you call IsMatch() make sure to pass RegexOptions.IgnoreCase as your second parameter. There is no reason to have to list out the variations for casing.

Edit: As Dario mentions, this is not going to work for the RegularExpressionValidator, as it does not support casing options.

Solution 4

You can embed case insensitity into the regular expression like so:

\.(?i:)(?:jpg|gif|doc|pdf)$

Solution 5

You can use this template for every file type:

ValidationExpression="^.+\.(([pP][dD][fF])|([jJ][pP][gG])|([pP][nN][gG])))$"

for ex: you can add ([rR][aA][rR]) for Rar file type and etc ...

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