Easy validation question

[rbgerman]

hey all,

I am getting an error on my page. It is doing a calculation so the input must
be a number. It throws an error if the number has a comma in it. How can I
avoid this?

ERROR:
An error occurred while evaluating the expression:

paymt=(url.prin)*i/(1-temp)

Error near line 158, column 9.

Cannot convert 100,000 to number.

Please, check the ColdFusion manual for the allowed conversions between data
types

[SteveBryant]

I wrote a UDF for this purpose which converts valid numbers (numbers with
commas and up to one decimal) to numeric values (at bottom of message). You can
also use the UDF, [url]http://www.cflib.org/udf.cfm?ID=707[/url] to remove all non-numeric
chracters - thereby forcing a numeric value.

Others may recommend val(), but be careful with that for this problem as it
returns the first numeric characters (it would return the numbers *before* the
first comma).

<cfscript>
function convertNumber(strNumber) {
var i = 0;
var tmpVal = "";
var thisChar = "";
var dotCount = 0;
for (i=1; i lte Len(strNumber); i=i+1) {
thisChar = Mid(strNumber, i, 1);
if ( isNumeric(thisChar) OR thisChar eq "." ) {
tmpVal = tmpVal & thisChar;
} else {
if ( thisChar eq "." AND dotCount eq 0 ) {
dotCount = dotCount + 1;
tmpVal = tmpVal & thisChar;
}
}
}
if ( Len(tmpVal) eq 0 ) {
tmpVal = 0;
}
return tmpVal;
}
</cfscript>

[Dan Bracuk]

It's probably easier to use replace() to get rid of the comma's. If there is any doubt as to whether or not the url variable is a number, isNumeric() can be used to check.

[SafariTECH]

you can also start out with the form so it only accepts a numeric entry using the validation techniques for forms