Usage

Add to your Gemfile:

gem 'email_validator'

Run:

bundle install

Then add the following to your model:

validates :my_email_attribute, email: true

Validation outside a model

If you'd like to validate an email outside of a model then here are some class methods that you can use:

EmailValidator.regexp # returns the regex
EmailValidator.valid?('narf@example.com') # => true
EmailValidator.invalid?('narf@example.com') # => false

Validation philosophy

The validation provided by this gem is loose. It just checks that there's an @ with something before and after it. See this article by David Gilbertson for an explanation of why.

Trimming whitespace

Your users may accidentally submit leading or trailing whitespace when submitting a form. You may want to automatically trim this. This is not the job of a validator gem but it's trivial to implement yourself by adding a setter in your model:

def email=(e)
  e = e.strip if e
  super
end

You may also want to convert emails to lowercase in the same way.

Alternative gems

Do you prefer a different email validation gem? If so, open an issue with a brief explanation of how it differs from this gem. I'll add a link to it in this README.

Thread safety

This gem is thread safe.