How to validate GUID is a GUID

Question

How to determine if a string contains a GUID vs just a string of numbers.

will a GUID always contain at least 1 alpha character?

Answer 1

A GUID is a 16-byte (128-bit) number, typically represented by a 32-character hexadecimal string. A GUID (in hex form) need not contain any alpha characters, though by chance it probably would. If you are targeting a GUID in hex form, you can check that the string is 32-characters long (after stripping dashes and curly brackets) and has only letters A-F and numbers.

There is certain style of presenting GUIDs (dash-placement) and regular expressions can be used to check for this, e.g.,

@"^(\{{0,1}([0-9a-fA-F]){8}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){12}\}{0,1})$"

from http://www.geekzilla.co.uk/view8AD536EF-BC0D-427F-9F15-3A1BC663848E.htm. That said, it should be emphasized that the GUID really is a 128-bit number and could be represented in a number of different ways.

Answer 2

Based on the accepted answer I created an Extension method as follows:

public static Guid ToGuid(this string aString)
{
    Guid newGuid;

    if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(aString))
    {
        return MagicNumbers.defaultGuid;
    }

    if (Guid.TryParse(aString, out newGuid))
    {
        return newGuid;
    }

    return MagicNumbers.defaultGuid;
}

Where "MagicNumbers.defaultGuid" is just "an empty" all zero Guid "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000".

In my case returning that value as the result of an invalid ToGuid conversion was not a problem.

Answer 3

There is no guarantee that a GUID contains alpha characters. FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF is a valid GUID so is 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 and anything in between.

If you are using .NET 4.0, you can use the answer above for the Guid.Parse and Guid.TryParse. Otherwise, you can do something like this:

public static bool TryParseGuid(string guidString, out Guid guid)
{
    if (guidString == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("guidString");
    try
    {
        guid = new Guid(guidString);
        return true;
    }
    catch (FormatException)
    {
        guid = default(Guid);
        return false;
    }
}

Answer 4

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globally_unique_identifier

There is no guarantee that an alpha will actually be there.

Answer 5

if(MyGuid!=Guild.Empty)

{

//Valid Guild

}

else {

// Invalid Guild

}

Answer 6

See if these helps :-

Guid guidResult = Guid.Parse(inputString)

(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.guid.parse.aspx)

bool isValid = Guid.TryParse(inputString, out guidOutput)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.guid.tryparse.aspx