Password validation rules with Xamarin Forms

Learn how to apply validation rules to your app passwords in Xamarin.Forms. The best, and fastest, way is to use the library Plugin.ValidationRules.

This article uses the library Plugin.ValidationRules to download from the NuGet Gallery here.

This article is part of a small series that I call “Tips and Tricks with Plugin.ValidationRules“ where I will teach you how to get the most out of this library so that you do not have headaches doing validations in your forms.

Validating the password

Creating the validation rule

The first thing we have to keep going is that if you want to play with validation rules, you have to create your rules. In this case, I’ll give you a small example of a validation rule for passwords that you can use with Plugin.ValidationRules.

...
    public class PasswordRule : IValidationRule<string>
    {
        public string ValidationMessage { get; set; }

        public bool Check(string value)
        {
            if (value == null)
            {
                ValidationMessage = "A password is required.";
                return false;
            }

            if (!char.IsLetter(value[0]))
            {
                ValidationMessage = "First character must be a letter.";
                return false;
            }

            if (!char.IsUpper(value[0]))
            {
                ValidationMessage = "First letter must be Capitalize.";
                return false;
            }

            if (value.Length < 8)
            {
                ValidationMessage = "Password length must be 8 characters minimum.";
                return false;
            }

            if (!value.Any(char.IsDigit))
            {
                ValidationMessage = "Your password must contain numbers.";
                return false;
            }

            if (!value.Any(char.IsSymbol) && !value.Any(char.IsPunctuation))
            {
                ValidationMessage = "Your password must contain symbols.";
                return false;
            }

            return true; // Yupiii ! We did !!!
        }
    }
...

Applying validation rules

With the new version of the Plugin.ValidationRules we have a builder that we can use to initialize our properties very easily.

...
        public Validatable<string> Password { get; set; }
        public Validatable<string> ConfirmPassword { get; set; }
...
        Password = Validator.Build<string>()
                .IsRequired("A password is required.")
                .WithRule(new PasswordRule());

        ConfirmPassword = Validator.Build<string>()
                .When(_ => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(Password.Value))
                .Must(x => x == Password.Value, "Password is not matching.");
...

• Notice that we are using Validator.Build<string>() to initialize our property.
• We use the extension . IsRequired() to add a non-null or empty validation rule.
• With the extension . WithRule() we added our validation rule  PasswordRule() for the password property we created earlier.

Extra: ConfirmPassword

If we want to confirm the password, we do not have to add the same rules but rather, compare both passwords. Let’s see it below:

• We are using the extension .When() to validate our password confirmation only when the password property is not empty.
• With the extension . Must() validates that both passwords provided by the user match.