Predefined masks and their regular expressions:

<table>
<tr>
<td><strong>pint</strong></td>
<td>/[\d]/</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>int</strong></td>
<td>/[\d\-]/</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>pnum</strong></td>
<td>/[\d\.]/</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>money</strong></td>
<td>/[\d\.\s,]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>num</strong></td>
<td>/[\d\-\.]/</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>hex</strong></td>
<td>/[0-9a-f]/i</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>email</strong></td>
<td>/[a-z0-9_\.\-@]/i</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>alpha</strong></td>
<td>/[a-z_]/i</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>alphanum</strong></td>
<td>/[a-z0-9_]/i</td>
</tr>
</table>

<br />
<br />

<h:form>
<h:panelGrid columns="2">
<h:outputText value="KeyFilter with regEx on a p:inputText" />
<p:inputText id="text1">
<p:keyFilter regEx="/[ABC]/i"/>
</p:inputText>

<h:outputText value="KeyFilter with mask on a h:inputText"/>

<h:inputText id="text2" />

<h:outputText value="KeyFilter with testFunction on a p:autoComplete" />

<p:autoComplete id="autoComplete1" value="#{autoCompleteView.txt1}"
completeMethod="#{autoCompleteView.completeText}" />
</h:panelGrid>

<p:keyFilter for="text2" mask="num"/>

 <p:keyFilter for="autoComplete1" testFunction="return c == 'z';"/>
</h:form>
------------------------------------------------------------
I need to allow only alphabetic characters [A-Z,a-z] in a PrimeFaces inputText
field.

How can I do this?

Not specific to Primefaces but to underlying JSF:

You can use a regex validator on your input field:

<h:inputText value="#{myBean.myText}" >

<f:validateRegex pattern="[a-zA-Z]+"/>
</h:inputText>
This will work with p:inputText as well.

Adapt the regular expression to your functional requirements.

how to changed regex message? currently it is showing 'Regex pattern does not
match'. @Matt Handy � Irfan Nasim Apr 5 '16 at 8:13
done with validatorMessage="Alpha numaric characters are not allowed in Last Name."
property of inputbox. � Irfan Nasim Apr 5 '16 at 8:21
add a comment

If you need to avoid characters in the view (input text) you can user p:keyFilter
tag as below

<p:inputText id="apePat"
placeholder="Apellido Paterno"
value="#{actualizaDatos.user.apePat}"
autocomplete="off"
label="Apellido Paterno"
validatorMessage="El campo apellido paterno es requerido">

<f:validateRequired/>

<p:keyFilter regEx="/[a-zA-Z�-�\\s\\' ]+/"/>

</p:inputText>
-------------------------------
How do I write a regular expression that includes all keyboard characters except
'~' and ','?
Have you tried this?

[^~,]
Now to exclude characters not in keyboard, I believe you have to include them all.

[a-zA-Z0-9\t\n ./<>?;:"'`!@#$%^&*()\[\]{}_+=|\\-]
Which pretty much covers it (even though it looks like a crazy way to get things
done). Maybe the problem definition can help you add more stuffs to exclude in the
first list [^~,] than try to create a huge list of all keyboard chars
You didn't say what language/tool you're using, but in Java I would go with this
regex:

"[\\p{Print}&&[^~,]]"
That's the intersection of two sets: all printing ASCII characters, and all
characters that aren't a tilde or a comma.
This worked for me:

[A-Za-z0-9-]+[ 0-9A-Za-z#$%=@!{},`~&*()'<>?.:;_|^/+\t\r\n\[\]"-]*

A related one.

I wasted a lot of time searching, so below is the answer I came up with.

I wanted all keyboard keys (including space and tab):

// all keys (including space and tab)

var allKeyboardKeysRegex = /^[a-zA-Z0-9~`!@#\$%\^&\*\(\)_\-\+={\
[\}\]\|\\:;"'<,>\.\?\/ ]*$/;

// example tests
var nonShiftChars = "`1234567890-= qwertyuiop[]\asdfghjkl;'zxcvbnm,./ "
var shiftChars = "~!@#$%^&*()_+{}|:\"<>? ";
var someAlphaNumeric = "aAbB12 89yYzZ";

// test with allKeyboardKeysRegex

allKeyboardKeysRegex.test(nonShiftChars);
allKeyboardKeysRegex.test(shiftChars);
allKeyboardKeysRegex.test(someAlphaNumeric);

Reg-Ex for all supported key board chars worked for me :

/^[a-zA-Z0-9.!@?#"$%&:';()*\+,\/;\-=[\\\]\^_{|}<>~` ]+$/