RasValidateEntryNameA function (ras.h)

Article
02/09/2023

The RasValidateEntryName function validates the format of a connection entry name. The name must contain at least one non-white-space alphanumeric character.

Syntax

DWORD RasValidateEntryNameA(
  [in] LPCSTR unnamedParam1,
  [in] LPCSTR unnamedParam2
);

Parameters

[in] unnamedParam1

A pointer to a null-terminated string that specifies the full path and file name of a phone-book (PBK) file. If this parameter is NULL, the function uses the current default phone-book file.

Windows Me/98/95: This parameter should always be NULL. Dial-up networking stores phone-book entries in the registry rather than in a phone-book file.

[in] unnamedParam2

Pointer to a null-terminated string that specifies an entry name.

The following characters are not allowed in an entry name.

Character	Meaning
\|	vertical bar
>	greater than symbol
<	less than symbol
?	question mark
*	asterisk
\	backward slash
/	forward slash
:	colon

Windows 2000 or later: The entry name cannot begin with a period (".").

Return value

If the function succeeds, the return value is ERROR_SUCCESS.

If the function fails, the return value is one of the following error codes or a value from Routing and Remote Access Error Codes or Winerror.h.

Value	Meaning
ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS	The entry name already exists in the specified phonebook.
ERROR_CANNOT_FIND_PHONEBOOK	The specified phonebook doesn't exist.
ERROR_INVALID_NAME	The format of the specified entry name is invalid.

Remarks

The following sample code validates the phone-book entry specified by the variable lpszEntry.

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include "ras.h"
#include <tchar.h>

DWORD __cdecl wmain(){

    LPTSTR lpszEntry = L"EntryName\0";

    DWORD nRet = RasValidateEntryName(NULL, lpszEntry);

    switch (nRet)
    {
        case ERROR_SUCCESS:
            printf("Entry name: %s is valid but doesn't exist in the default phone book\n", lpszEntry);
            break;
        case ERROR_INVALID_NAME:
            printf("Entry name: %s is invalid\n", lpszEntry);
            break;
        case ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS:
            printf("Entry name: %s already exists in the default phone book\n", lpszEntry);
            break;
        default:
            printf("RasValidateEntryName failed: Error = %d\n", nRet);
            break;
    }
}

Note

The ras.h header defines RasValidateEntryName as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 2000 Professional [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	ras.h
Library	Rasapi32.lib
DLL	Rasapi32.dll