topic Web Designer Constraint regular expression fail to publish when using $ in regex in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Web Designer Constraint regular expression fail to publish when using $ in regex

Teresa_Blader — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 18:03:31 GMT

In the Survey123 Web Designer constraints I want my string field to only include letters, numbers, and spaces. My understanding is that the regex would be: regex(.,'^[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+$')... however this fails to publish.

I'm entering this in the UI in Web Designer

^[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+$

I've tried many many different things and it seems like the fail happens because of how $ is being handled as is passes ^[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+$ from the UI to syntax. Excluding $ does not solve the issue - it publishes but passes the constraint no matter what is entered in the string.

Publishing seems to be taking what should be regex(.,'^[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+$') and turning it into regex(.,'^[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+)) and failing to publish.

.*['"].*

works in the opposite way... like the constraint would only pass if my string includes a special character. So don't want that.

Goal:

Santa's Workshop = fail the constraint and show the message

Santas Workshop = pass the constraint and allow to submit

So how would I get this to happen if I can't use $ in the syntax without moving to survey123 connect??

Re: Web Designer Constraint regular expression fail to publish when using $ in regex

Teresa_Blader — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 18:10:46 GMT

ERROR WHEN PUBLISHING:

999: b"ODK Validate Errors:\n>> XForm is invalid. See above for the errors.\norg.javarosa.xform.parse.XFormParseException: bind for ${Theme} contains invalid constraint expression [regex(.,'^[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+))] Couldn't understand the expression starting at this point: regex(.,\xcd\x8e'^[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+...\n\nResult: Invalid"

Re: Web Designer Constraint regular expression fail to publish when using $ in regex

CodyPatterson — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 11:50:53 GMT

Hey @Teresa_Blader

Would it be possible to add the constraint in a hidden field?
https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/hidden-field/td-p/845587

Once the hidden field is added, changing the default value to be this: "^[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+$" with quotes and everything, then once you're wanting to validate put in the validation section something like this:

regex(., ${pattern_helper})

I believe that the formatting is causing the issue, but the variable reference may end up passing this validation check.

Cody

Re: Web Designer Constraint regular expression fail to publish when using $ in regex

Teresa_Blader — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 15:54:23 GMT

That's such a great idea BUT regular expressions right now only allow "value" and "field" is not available in the dropdown 😭

Re: Web Designer Constraint regular expression fail to publish when using $ in regex

cjms — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 20:23:03 GMT

A work around that works for me is to use a negative lookahead (?!...) . e.g. basic phone number regex:

^\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4}(?![\w ])

(?![\w ]) = Not followed by a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or space character.

Note: That's not a comprehensive list of all characters, just basic of what people might type in. You could add more restrictions.