Java validation regex pattern for the OID root UID value

17-Jul-2015

NOTE: This article is 3 years or older so its information may no longer be relevant. Read on at your own discretion! Comments for this article have automatically been locked, refer to the FAQ for more details.

I've been focusing on making sure that the input to my web services at work is correct. One of these inputs happens to be the root part of a HL7 OID, which is a dot-separated UID. The values look like this '1.2.3', '9.5.6.3.7774.1', etc. It's very similar to an IP address, but can have more than 4 parts.

This is a very simple pattern I'm using for validation. It assumes that the input is non-null and not an empty string.

Java

static final Pattern UID_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("[[0-9]+\\.]*");

...then to use it, I do something like this...

Java

if (!UID_PATTERN.matcher(myString).matches()) {

throw RuntimeException("String doesn't match the UID pattern");

}

-i

Skip down to comments...

Hope you found this post useful...

...so please read on! I love writing articles that provide beneficial information, tips and examples to my readers. All information on my blog is provided free of charge and I encourage you to share it as you wish. There is a small favour I ask in return however - engage in comments below, provide feedback, and if you see mistakes let me know.

If you want to show additional support and help me pay for web hosting and domain name registration, donations, no matter how small, are always welcome!

Use of any information contained in this blog post/article is subject to this disclaimer.