[Resolved] I want to prevent someone entering an email address as their first name

[Author]

Posts

[stephanieK-2]

Tell us what you are trying to do?
I want to prevent someone entering an email address as their first name

Is there any documentation that you are following?
I have been looking at: https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/cred-user-forms/ and exploring the use of generic fields, however I cannot see how the "validate_format":1, is used, and how I can prevent users from using an email address as their first name.

Is there a similar example that we can see? Not that I'm aware of.

What is the link to your site?
hidden link (the create user form at the bottom)

[Christian Cox]

Hi, the validate_form attribute is only helpful if your field is something other than plain text - like an email address or a number. Since the first name field can capture any kind of plain text, there's not really a way to specify additional validation in the field settings. The only way to implement this type of validation is to use PHP code on the backend and the cred_form_validate API. Then you could set up a custom regex or other string validation system to test the first name entered and return an error if necessary. Here's a simple example using the validation API to test the first name value:

add_filter('cred_form_validate','no_email_name_validation',10,2);
function no_email_name_validation($error_fields, $form_data)
{
    //field data are field values and errors
    list($fields,$errors)=$error_fields;
    //uncomment this if you want to print the field values
    //print_r($fields);
    //validate if specific form
    if ($form_data['id']==12345)
    {
        //check first name value
        if ($fields['wpcf-first_name']['value']!='John')
        {
            //set error message for my_field
            $errors['wpcf-first_name']='Only members named John are allowed'';
        }
    }
    //return result
    return array($fields,$errors);
}

Replace 12345 with the numeric ID of your CRED user form, and modify the conditional using your own custom validation code. I don't have a good PHP email address regex to offer, but a quick search of the web led me to this one you could try: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12026842/how-to-validate-an-email-address-in-php