Newbee - help with validating last name to allow apostrophe

[steve800]

newbee needs a boost in how to validate a last name like O'Neal or O'Brien to allow the apostrophe to included?

That's all, folks Thanks

[lampcms.com]

One important thing to consider first - is it possible that a user will enter non-english characters?

If it's only for English letters and apostrophies, then its very easy.

[steve800]

Bankruptcy office in USA... clients of all nationalities... predominately US, Russian, and Spanish/Mexican names.

[SituationSoap]

Validated as in "Able to put this in the Database"? If that's the case, parameterize your SQL, and you'll be good to go.

[lampcms.com]

Since court filings use English letters only, you can use this to test for valid name:
if(preg_match("/[^a-zA-Z\s'-]+/", $string)){
exit('BAD');
}
// continue your script

[steve800]

Thanks to all for the quick response ...

Closed!

[Jake Arkinstall]

@Sharedlog.com, are you stating that foreign letters are invalid?

You shouldn't disallow those letters, it's wrong to do so. What about people's names, or names of a foreign language?

Instead, use MySQL_Real_Escape_String to allow the apostrophe etc in the name (You should do this to all MySQL input anyway unless you are using a library like PDO which doesn't require it). Then make sure you're using a character encoding which supports a vast range of characters, such as UTF-8 or UTF-16.

That way you allow input in without appearing unprofessional - and when dealing with court cases, being unprofessional and changing peoples' names so that they work with your broken system could be enough to bring a real court case upon your site.

[lampcms.com]

@Sharedlog.com, are you stating that foreign letters are invalid?

You shouldn't disallow those letters, it's wrong to do so. What about people's names, or names of a foreign language?

Instead, use MySQL_Real_Escape_String to allow the apostrophe etc in the name (You should do this to all MySQL input anyway unless you are using a library like PDO which doesn't require it). Then make sure you're using a character encoding which supports a vast range of characters, such as UTF-8 or UTF-16.

That way you allow input in without appearing unprofessional - and when dealing with court cases, being unprofessional and changing peoples' names so that they work with your broken system could be enough to bring a real court case upon your site.

I am saying that court filings in the US are done in English letters only. Even foreign names are spelled using English-only letters and that's why I suggested this regex.

[steve800]

Thanks so much ... it's amazing how much I've learned from you'all ...