Joomla! Discussion Forums

Hi,

How would I add support for emails that contain apostrophes such as linda.o'sullivan@xyz.com.

Currently this is being rejected but as there is no email regulation or standard that specifically prevents such email addresses and we have a significant number of people with such names in our organisation I would like to get this working.

It does seem more like a BUG than a FEATURE, doesn't it?

We are using JOOMLA v1.5.10, together with VirtueMart.
the site in question is at:

http://www.jdproductsupport.com

Thanks,

Nik C

The RFC does allow apostrophe's and many other characters in email addresses, however, many email servers/clients/users will have problems in adding, interpreting, entering said characters.

For example SquirrelMail will escape all input so you end up with "\'" in the names. Plesk won't allow several non character (but RFC valid) characters in an email. Most users don't know how to enter 'special characters' and lots of cell phones don't allow entering special characters.

I went through this a while back for a component that had to create email accounts for new users based on their username. I ended up with a regex that stripped all but characters/numbers before I was able to create the email account using the Plesk API.

That's all fair and good.

BUT

How do you tell that a 10 000 strong organisation that everyone in their organisation has to change their email address to access ONE of their corporate site, if it happens to have an apostrohe in it?

Hmmmmm,

That's a biggie....

NIk C

Where is it being rejected? Registration? Somewhere else?

Hi,

At this point we are using CSVI to import and it would not let us import them, at this poitn I am not sure if it is CSVI that is doign the validation or still JOOMLA.

But I know that JOOMLA won't let anyone register with an apostrophe in their name as well from other websites we have done, but as they were for a much smaller audience it was not a big problem.

Nik C

Just for clarification.. do you mean J! won't allow apostrophes in the username, last/first name or email address? And what is CSVI?

Also, you may get more ideas if you ask this question in a different forum.. just a thought.. I'll be following the responses because I'm interested in any ideas/resolutions.

Yes, Joomla email validation does not allow apostrophes in the name part of an email (i.e. o'sullivan@email.com)

CSVI is a very good spread sheet importing extension that is usually used with the VirtueMart extension.

I put it up here as I think it is a bug that JOOMLA can't do that. Posted it in other forums earlier this year when the problem first surfaced, but had a lukewarm response ....


Nik C

Unless someone comes up with a better idea... sounds like the resolution would involve a core hack of the email edit routine and maybe a plugin that is triggered at varying user or system events.

The core hack would probably be easy enough...but the plugin(s) could get hairy depending on what components you use and how robust they are in validating or checking the email field. It would take a lot of testing and monitoring of new versions though.

you are right - but that would be only a solution in the short term.

With a core hack we'd always have to be on our toes and revist this everytime a new .x version is coming, in case it'd changed and reapply/-test the hack.

But on the medium to long term, I think that Joomla should at least make this a configurable option (as in PLEASE ENTER THE EXCLUDED CHARACCTERS FOR EMAILS IN THIS FIELD: ',!,/,:, )

At least then it is up to the web admin of the site how email is handled and which ones are allowed. there are simply too many users out there with the apostrophes, and at least in our company it would cause a major headache if they all needed changing.

I know for a fact from previous forum responses and just talking to other joomla-ists that many of them would welcome this flexibility a lot!

Nik C

Please submit a bug in the tracker and explain which valid email addresses aren't validating.

Ian

I have also spotted another problem with the e-mail validation of Joomla. It allows incorrect e-mail addresses to be entered. For example [joesmith.@mail.com] and [joe..smith@mail.com] are both incorrect, but they are both accepted. This happens on the administrator side when adding / editing a user and also on the demo page when registering. I haven't tested the Installation e-mail one but I think it too will then be the same.

As for the problem Nik is having, the RFC does support it and even though many mail servers don't, it is still considered a 'legal' e-mail address. I have created patches that I will upload here and just link to this thread from the bug tracker (since I can't upload files there). Also, had to change the patch extension to .txt since the forum doesn't support .patch or .diff. So email_validation.txt fixes only the first issue mentioned and email_validation_with_apos.txt fixes the first issue as well as the issue Nik is having.

The apostrophe enabled patch does have a few limitations - you can't have a [ ' ] and [ . ] next to each other for example.

Thanks, Scuderia47!

I'll give that a spin next week. I hope it will inspire some of the JOOMLA dev gurus to look into it and add it ins some form and shape to one of the next releases.

As I wrote in my bug report I find as the apostrohe is not ILlegal, there should be at least be the option of using as there ARE mail sevice providers that are not web based, but quite corporatae that DO allow apostrohphes; and why exclude or punsih them for it?

Thanks,
Nik C

Well, we did find this one regular expression that is supposed to be quite good, but it seems a little hard to maintain and it might hurt performance.

http://ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html

Ian

http://mythic-beasts.com/~pdw/cgi-bin/emailvalidate

works though? ..

Hi there,

How do I apply the patches listed above?

TC

I am also having problems with apostrophes in emails. Have any of you figured out what file and line to edit or comment out?

I have a site that is just about ready to go live but the client is very unhappy about the apostrophe problem.

no have not figured taht out, or found a solution.
I have also created a bug report on the respective site (can't remember the exact adress) and heard nothing baout it so far.

I woudl really appreciate if it was a lot more configurable which email addresses are 'allowed' and which iones are not, as JOOMLA currently follows the WEB BASED EMAIL providers format which is not as open as the protocol normally used by COPORATE systems.

This seriously hampers the adoption in that area - a lot of companies would like to use it but there is a lack of configurability that makes it difficult.

Nik C