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I have the following requirement for valid usernames:

  1. Only alphanumeric characters and -
  2. Must not start with a -

I wrote this regex (on Rubular):

/^[^a-zA-Z0-9]|[^a-zA-Z0-9-]+/

Is there a better to test this requirement other than to iterate through all the possible scenarios? I'm doing something like this.

  # There much more, but for brevity's sake I'm only including a few
  illegal_chars = [ "~", "!", "@", "#", "$"]

  illegal_chars.each do |char|
    test "username does not accept #{char}" do
      user = users(:homer)
      user.username = "name#{char}"
      refute user.valid?, "Username should not be valid"
    end
  end

I'll repeat for cases where #{char} is at the beginning and end of the word.

  1. Am I testing too much? Is there a better way? Running 70 or 80 tests for something like this seems excessive.
  2. As an aside, can my regex be expressed better?
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1 Answer 1

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Your regex looks wrong, see my link below.

If your functional requirement is that usernames match a certain regex, then your tests should reflect that. It is wrong to test a bunch of edge cases that a generic regex catches.

See this. All you need in your test is to do:

username_regex = /^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*$/i
passing_usernames = ['passing','pAsSing-PASS-'.....]
failing_usernames = ['-failing','failing#'....]
passing_usernames.each { |username| assert_match username_regex, username}
failing_usernames.each { |username| assert_no_match username_regex, username }

If you're getting your username from somewhere else then just plug that in the same way.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ For Ruby, your regex will not work, but it's an easy fix: You need to add A-Z: ^[a-z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9-]+$ \$\endgroup\$
    – Mohamad
    Jan 14, 2015 at 11:11
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Mohamad I apologize, I forgot to copy part of the regex. You don't need A-Z in the regex, you can append i (for case insensitive) after the slash. Of course, both work, but this way is shorter. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 14, 2015 at 13:09
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    \$\begingroup\$ Assuming usernames can be of length one, you might want to change + to * in username_regex. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 15, 2015 at 5:53
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    \$\begingroup\$ You could also use a POSIX character class (which can only be used within brackets): username_regex = /^[:alnum:][[:alnum:]-]*$/. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 15, 2015 at 6:03

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