RegEx for matching UK Postcodes

Question

I\'m after a regex that will validate a full complex UK postcode only within an input string. All of the uncommon postcode forms must be covered as well as the usual. For in

Answer 1

here's how we have been dealing with the UK postcode issue:

^([A-Za-z]{1,2}[0-9]{1,2}[A-Za-z]?[ ]?)([0-9]{1}[A-Za-z]{2})$

Explanation:

• expect 1 or 2 a-z chars, upper or lower fine
• expect 1 or 2 numbers
• expect 0 or 1 a-z char, upper or lower fine
• optional space allowed
• expect 1 number
• expect 2 a-z, upper or lower fine

This gets most formats, we then use the db to validate whether the postcode is actually real, this data is driven by openpoint https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html

hope this helps