Regular Expression Check Validator

Description

The 'Regular Expression Check' compares the value of a text, number, or URL field against a regular expression. For example to verify that the content matches a given format.

Configuration

You must select the field to be checked and enter the regular expression. For example:

• [0-9]{4}-[0-9]{4} would allow numbers such as: 1245-7783
• [0-9]+ EUR$ would allow price tags such as: 34 EUR
• [a-z]* would allow an empty string, or any lower case word such as: yellow
• Option [A,B] would allow a selection of options: Option A, Option B or both.

Refer to detailed documentation on Regex for technical descriptions. You can use this Java Regular Expression Tester to help with testing and to see more examples.

Additional configuration options include:

"Concatenate multiple values"

This option is only available for fields that can store multiple values including the system fields "Affected Version/s", "Components", "Fix Version/s" and "Watchers" as well as most custom fields with multiple settable values.

• If this box is unchecked, the regular expression is applied to each of the field's values and each value must match the regular expression but not all must be present.
• If this box is checked the values are concatenated with the separator   ", " (i.e. the values [Option A, Option AA] are concatenated as the string value "Option A, Option AA") and the exact sequence must match. Typically this option is used to check if a particular sequence of values is selected.

Note: The order in which the values are concatenated, depends on the natural sorting order of the field value type. Since the values may be stored in the issue in an unspecific order, values that do not have a natural sorting order may be concatenated in an unspecific order.

"Split on newline characters"

This option is only available for text area fields including the system fields "Description" and "Environment" as well as text area custom fields.

• If this box is unchecked, the regular expression is applied to the entire field multiline text value.
• If this box is checked the field multiline text value will be split into individual lines and each line is evaluated against the regexp separately. 

For information on how to configure a check in Jira, see the Jira documentation.

 Be careful about what kind of regular expressions you are using. Some might be exploited by a malicious person. See ReDoS . It is your responsibility as Jira administrator to only use safe regular expressions.

You can define a custom error message for most JSU validators to provide a clear explanation of the situation to your users. If you leave this field empty, a default error message from Jira will be displayed on validation errors. This might be a bit too technical, and make it difficult for your users to understand and resolve the error. 

Example

A workflow is configured so that the 'Resolve' transition has the 'Regular Expression Check' where 'TextField' has to match '[a-z]*'. If a user attempts to resolve an issue on this workflow, where the 'TextField' is for example '7 pieces', the check will fail, and no action will be performed. However 'pieces' as content would be allowed.

Supported Field Types

JSU supports many different field types such as system fields and custom fields. However you should be aware, that not all field types are supported, and not in all combinations. We aim to cover the most important field types and are continuously adding and improving how different field types are supported. Some custom fields of other third-party apps might never be supported. You should always test anything you do with issue fields with JSU. You can try it with a free 30-day evaluation license.