- the first is that you have a problem
- the second is that your problem can be solved using regex
What do I mean by this? well regex is one of those things that you're not going to use very often so it's not really worth the effort to learn it 100% but just enough to get what you need done and forget it by the time you need it again, much like calculus.
Anyway this is a pretty solid site to find what you need Regex Library.
but this is what I use to verify a Canadian sin "^\d{3}(\s?|[-]?)\d{3}(\s?|[-]?)\d{3}$"
It's got you covered for 123123123, 123 123 123, 123-123-123
to use it with an input box use a combination of the pattern and title attributes
<input id = "SIN_TXT" name="SIN_TXT" type ="text" title="6 digit Canadain Social Insurence Number" pattern="^\d{3}(\s?|[-]?)\d{3}(\s?|[-]?)\d{3}$" placeholder="### ### ###" />
if you are a poor soul that has to support a lower end browser such as ie8 then attach it using javascript
function validateSIN(sinString)
{
var sinPattern = /^\d{3}(\s?|[-]?)\d{3}(\s?|[-]?)\d{3}$/;
return sinPattern.test(sinString);
}
Now that you've validated that the user is submitting a 9 digit number, lets confirm that it is in fact a SIN and not just 9 random digits, check out this Validate Sin Number.
here's the algorithm I use:
function verifySIN(SIN) {
var sinArray = SIN.replace(/\W/g, '')
var t = 0;
if (sinArray.length != 9)
return false;
for (x in sinArray) {
var p = 0;
t += (p = (x % 2 + 1) * sinArray[x]) > 9 ? (p + (p % 10 * 9)) / 10 : p;
}
return t % 10 === 0;
}
