Check a list for spaces or invalid characters

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

Hello buddies,

Here is my challenging issue:

When my customers place their orders online, sometimes they type spaces or invalid characters in their email field address.

So every next day I have a list of email addresses with some of them invalid.

i.e. {“name1@email.com”, “name 2@email.com”, “name3@émail.com”, “name4@email.cöm”}

where only the first one is valid.

Is there any way of eliminating all those invalid entries with a script and getting a “clean” list to contact directly those customers only?

#2

Here is one solution. It is set to show the goodEmailList at the end of the routine. Replace this with badEmailList and the badEmailList will be displayed.

property legalCaps : "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
property legalLower : "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
property legalNums : "0123456789"
property legalChars : "!#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~@."
property doubleDot : ".."

set allLegalChars to legalCaps & legalLower & legalNums & legalChars

set emailList to {"name1@email.com", "name 2@email.com", "name3@émail.com", "name4@email.cöm", "name..5@email.com"}
set goodEmailList to {}
set badEmailList to {}

repeat with anEmail in emailList
	set OK to true
	if anEmail contains doubleDot then
		set OK to false
		copy (anEmail as text) to the end of the badEmailList
	else
		repeat with i from 1 to the count anEmail
			set theChar to character i of anEmail
			if allLegalChars does not contain theChar then
				set OK to false
				copy (anEmail as text) to the end of the badEmailList
				exit repeat
			end if
		end repeat
		if OK then copy (anEmail as text) to the end of the goodEmailList
	end if
end repeat
goodEmailList

Model: Mac Pro (Mid 2010)
AppleScript: 2.7
Browser: Firefox 79.0
Operating System: macOS 10.14

#3

Amazing! Great work my friend! You help me save so much time!

One last question, how can we exclude also some other invalids like “name6@emailcom” or those which do not follow in general the pattern “aaa@bbb.ccc” ?

Unfortunately there are so many daily orders with mistyped email addresses!

#4

You can check if some text is valid email address using AsObjC. It checks pattern automatically:


use AppleScript version "2.4"
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions

set emailsList to {"name1@email.com", "name 2@email.com", "name3@émail.com", "name4@email.cöm", "name..5@email.com", "name6@emailcom"}

set validEmailsList to {}
repeat with email in emailsList
	set foundedText to (my findEmailAddressesIn:email)
	if (contents of email) = foundedText then
		set end of validEmailsList to contents of email
	end if
end repeat
return validEmailsList

on findEmailAddressesIn:theString
	-- Locate all the "links" in the text.
	set theNSDataDetector to current application's NSDataDetector's dataDetectorWithTypes:(current application's NSTextCheckingTypeLink) |error|:(missing value)
	set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
	set theURLsNSArray to theNSDataDetector's matchesInString:theString options:0 range:{location:0, |length|:theString's |length|()}
	-- Extract email links
	set emailPredicate to current application's NSPredicate's predicateWithFormat:"self.URL.scheme == 'mailto'"
	set emailURLs to theURLsNSArray's filteredArrayUsingPredicate:emailPredicate
	-- Get just the addresses
	set emailsArray to emailURLs's valueForKeyPath:"URL.resourceSpecifier"
	--eliminate duplicates
	set emailsArray to (current application's NSSet's setWithArray:emailsArray)'s allObjects()
	-- Join the remainder as a single, return-delimited text
	set emailAddresses to emailsArray's componentsJoinedByString:(return)
	-- Return as AppleScript text
	return emailAddresses as text
end findEmailAddressesIn:

NOTE: as I see, the 5th email (with double dot) is valid email address as well as the 1st email

#5

KniazidisR,

Very, very nice work!

The specification of valid characters for an email that I found clearly indicated that the double dot (…) was not allowed unless it was within a quoted address. This example is not quoted hence why it was not allowed in my code.

Again, I really think that your solution makes things a lot easier except that it isn’t exactly perfect.

Best,

HaoleSurferDude

#6

@KniazidisR have I told you how much I love you?