Regular expression for address field validation

In case if you don't have a fixed format for the address as mentioned above, I would use regex expression just to eliminate the symbols which are not used in the address (like specialized sybmols - &(%#$^). Result would be:

[A-Za-z0-9'\.\-\s\,]

See the answer to this question on address validating with regex: regex street address match

The problem is, street addresses vary so much in formatting that it's hard to code against them. If you are trying to validate addresses, finding if one isn't valid based on its format is mighty hard to do. This would return the following address (253 N. Cherry St. ), anything with its same format:

\d{1,5}\s\w.\s(\b\w*\b\s){1,2}\w*\.

This allows 1-5 digits for the house number, a space, a character followed by a period (for N. or S.), 1-2 words for the street name, finished with an abbreviation (like st. or rd.).

Because regex is used to see if things meet a standard or protocol (which you define), you probably wouldn't want to allow for the addresses provided above, especially the first one with the dash, since they aren't very standard. you can modify my above code to allow for them if you wish--you could add

(-?)

to allow for a dash but not require one.

In addition, http://rubular.com/ is a quick and interactive way to learn regex. Try it out with the addresses above.