How to Validate Email Address without using Regular Expression in JavaScript ?

Last Updated : 19 Jan, 2024

Email validation in JavaScript is the process of ensuring that an email address entered by the user is in the correct format and is a valid email address or not. This is typically done on the client side using JavaScript before the form is submitted to the server.

An email address must have the following components to be considered valid:

Username: It is the unique address that appears before the @ symbol. The username can contain letters, numbers, and certain special characters (e.g., ., _, -).
@ symbol: It separates the username from the domain name.
Domain name: It is the part of the email address that appears after the @ symbol. The domain name can contain letters, numbers, and certain special characters. The domain name must contain at least one period (.) to separate the different levels of the domains. For example – geeksforgeeks.org has two levels: geeksforgeeks and org).
Top-level domain: It is the part of the domain name that appears after the last period (For example – .com, .edu, .gov).

Additionally, there are some conventions and additional rules for email addresses, such as:

Some domain names may have subdomains (For example – write.geeksforgeeks.org)
Email addresses are case-insensitive, meaning the characters can be in upper or lower case.
Some special characters like “+” or “_” are allowed.

Approach: Using String methods

Email validation in JavaScript on the client side can be done without using regular expressions by using a combination of string methods and logical conditions to check if the email address entered by the user is in the correct format.

This code checks if the “@” symbol is present in the email address by looking for its position using the indexOf() method. If the “@” symbol is not present or it is the first character of the email address, the method returns false, indicating that the email address is invalid.

The lastIndexOf() method is used to find the last occurrence of the “.” character in the email address. If the “.” character is not present if it appears before the “@” symbol or if it is the last character of the email address, this method returns false indicating the email address is invalid.

Email Validation Function:
- The JavaScript function validateEmailAddress checks the validity of an email address without using regular expressions.
- It utilizes basic string manipulation and comparison methods to validate the email format.
Key Validation Checks:
- The function checks the presence and position of the “@” symbol (atSymbol).
- It verifies the presence and position of the last “.” symbol (dotSymbol).
- It ensures that “@” is not at the beginning and “.” is not at the beginning or immediately after “@”.
- It confirms that there is at least one character between “@” and “.”.
- It checks that there is at least one character after the last “.” symbol.
- It ensures there are no spaces in the email address.
Alert Messages:
- If the email address passes all validation checks, an alert with “Email address is valid” is displayed.
- If any of the checks fail, an alert with “Error !!! Email address is not valid” is displayed.
Form Submission:
- The form includes an onSubmit attribute, calling the validateEmailAddress function when the form is submitted.
- The function returns true if the email is valid, allow the form submission, and false otherwise, preventing the form from being submitted.
HTML Form:
- The HTML form includes a text input for the email address and a submit button.
- It captures the email address input and triggers the validation function on form submission.

If all of the above conditions are met, the email address is considered to be valid and the validation passes.

Example: In this example, we will implement the above approach.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
 
<head>
    <title>Validate Email Address</title>
 
    <script type="text/javascript">
 
        // JavaScript code for email validation
        // without using regular expression
        function validateEmailAddress(emailAddress) {
            let atSymbol = emailAddress.indexOf("@");
            let dotSymbol = emailAddress.lastIndexOf(".");
            let spaceSymbol = emailAddress.indexOf(" ");
 
            if ((atSymbol != -1) &&
                (atSymbol != 0) &&
                (dotSymbol != -1) &&
                (dotSymbol != 0) &&
                (dotSymbol > atSymbol + 1) &&
                (emailAddress.length > dotSymbol + 1) &&
                (spaceSymbol == -1)) {
                alert("Email address is valid.");
                return true;
            } else {
                alert("Error !!! Email address is not valid.");
                return false;
            }
        }
    </script>
</head>
 
<body>
    <h1>Please enter your email address below</h1>
    <form name="the form" action="" method="post"
        onSubmit="var the_result = validateEmailAddress(this.email_address.value); return the_result;">
        Email address: <input type="text" name="email_address">
        <input type="submit" value="Submit form">
    </form>
</body>
 
</html>