Database Field Regular expression

This plugin provides an additional field type for regular expression for the database activity. The field is very similar to the "Short text" field. The main difference is that input can be validated against a regular expression that must match before the value is accepted.

Installation

Please run the following steps: 1. Extract the zip archive into <moodle_install_dir>/mod/data/field/. From Moodle 5.1 on it's <moodle_install_dir>/public/mod/data/field/ 1. Rename the newly created directory moodle-datafield_regex into regex so that the files from the repository are inside the directory hierarchy .../mod/data/field/regex. 1. Finish the installation via the Moodle admin page.

Usage

Within your database activity in the Fields tab when creating a new field, the selection contains the type "Regex".

Creating a new field

When creating a new field of the type regular expression this dialogue shows up:

Apart from the standard settings for a field, there are: * Regular expression: for the regular expression itself. The term must not contain delimiter characters, such as /. Also, these characters don't need to be escaped in the string. * Case-sensitive: check for case in the regex term. This need to be checked when the patter mixes upper case and lower case letters or, you want to explicit have a certain format, without transformation of the values in post processing. * Only partial match: By default the regular expression is applied to the entire string (from the beginning to the end - using the anchor characters ^ and $). To enable a partial match, this option can be set. The regex pattern then must only match somewhere in the submitted value. * Custom error message: By default a generic error message is displayed to the user when the input is not valid, i.e. does not match the regular expression. This error message can be customized, so that the user get's an idea how a correct input should look like. The error message is passed to the Moodle filters before being displayed. Therefore, multi language error messages can be provided.

The option Required field is a standard Moodle options that do not change in this context.

Whe the field settings are saved the newly created field shows up in the list of fields.

Add a new entry

The appearance of a field of the type regular expression looks the same as a short text field. The difference is, that the input is validated against the provided regular expression. If the input does not match an error message is shown to the user and the entry cannot be saved.

With a customized error message the user can be given a hint how the input is supposed to look like. Otherwise, a generic error message is shown that the input is invalid.

With template customization you may also provide further explanations to the user which input is expected.

Attribution

The SVG icon representing the regular expression datatype plugin was taken from https://iconduck.com/icons/275980/regex. It's published under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Version History

1.6

• Add support for Moodle 5.1.
• Remove unsupported PHP versions from the CI pipeline.
• Prefill fields with old value when an invalid data error occurs.

1.5

• Add support for Moodle 5.0

1.4

• Added Moodle 4.5 to the CI pipeline.

1.3

• Moved install script to the correct location db/install.php.
• Support for Moodle 4.4 and PHP 8.3.

1.2

• Change link to icon in field list.
• Remove obsolete field "Autolink".
• Change wording from new type to additional type.
• Adjust documentation in README file.

Most of these issues were done because of the extensive review by Laurent David - thank you.

1.1

• Add possibility to add a custom error message when input is invalid.
• Documentation in README file extended with screenshots

1.0

Initial release.