HTML5 minimum character length validation ignoring spaces and tabs

Question

I am using HTML5 \'pattern\' attribute with \'required\' for validation of input boxes. HTML5\'s required attribute works but it can accept spaces and tabs which is not good

Answer 1

I managed a silly hack that does what you asked:

There must be 6 non-space characters for this to pass. so "asdfgh", " abc def " will work, but "abc de" fails.

It DOES NOT work for your comment about "there's a space after Anthony" but as Anthony contains 6 characters, then it's fine? If not, can you clarify further in the question.

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To explain how it works:

• it takes a pattern of "take 1 non-space character" \S followed by "none-or-more space characters" \s*
• you need the pattern to be matched 6 or more times (pattern){6,} i.e. (\S\s*){6,}
• then allow non-or-more spaces at the front \s*

If you want to limit the characters allowed to Alpha only, change the \S to [A-Za-z].

Yes, it's a hack IMO as it will be hell to parse internally on long strings. But does the job. You might want to mix with maxlength to limit that as well?