issue with regex on custom field validator with line breaks

[David Elman]

my regext in Validators is:

The field Testing Instructions its contents must match against the regular expression ^((?!Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready).)*$

testing instructions is a "Text Field (multi-line)" with a default of:

Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready

When I have testing instructions with a line break such as

a
a

I get this error of not matching :(

Field Testing Instructions with actual value a a does not match regular expression ^((?!Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready).)*$

It seems that you have tried to perform an illegal workflow operation.

If you think this message is wrong, please contact your JIRA administrators.

What can I do to allow line breaks in the value that I am validating?

--

What I am trying to do is require testing instructions field be filled out before transitioning to a status for testing. but sadly, Empty custom fields don't show on a ticket by default... and so I need to have a default value so I can't use field exists validators :(

[CEDRIC ZABEL · Accepted solution]

To turn on MULTILINE mode in a Java regular expression, put a “(?m)” in it. So, in your case, the regular expression would be

(?m)^((?!Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready).)*$

The “(?m)” construct is an advanced feature. I’d go into it more, but the Atlassian site really isn’t the place to for it.

As an aside: what you really want is to say that the field does not match something, but I guess Jira on-demand doesn’t allow you to do that. So, you’re stuck with the weird negative-lookahead regular expression. That’s a pity.

[David Elman]

@cedricThanks, but that isn't working, with a testing instructions field of

line 1 a

line 2 a

I still get the same error :(

Field Testing Instructions with actual value a a does not match regular expression (?m)^((?!Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready).)*$

[CEDRIC ZABEL]

Oh, it must internally be using the matches() method of the Matcher class instead of find(). I’m not used to that.

In that case, you want to turn on the DOTALL mode. Use “(?s)” instead of “(?m)”. So you get

(?s)^((?!Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready).)*$

That should do it.

[erin_quick-laughlin]

We were running into the same exact issue, @Ced  your last suggestion from 9/1/2014  totally worked!  Thanks!

(?s)^((?!Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready).)*$