How to test valid UUID/GUID?

Currently, UUID's are as specified in RFC4122. An often neglected edge case is the NIL UUID, noted here. The following regex takes this into account and will return a match for a NIL UUID. See below for a UUID which only accepts non-NIL UUIDs. Both of these solutions are for versions 1 to 5 (see the first character of the third block).

Therefore to validate a UUID...

/^[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-5][0-9a-f]{3}-[089ab][0-9a-f]{3}-[0-9a-f]{12}$/i

...ensures you have a canonically formatted UUID that is Version 1 through 5 and is the appropriate Variant as per RFC4122.

NOTE: Braces { and } are not canonical. They are an artifact of some systems and usages.

Easy to modify the above regex to meet the requirements of the original question.

HINT: regex group/captures

To avoid matching NIL UUID:

/^[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[1-5][0-9a-f]{3}-[89ab][0-9a-f]{3}-[0-9a-f]{12}$/i

regex to the rescue

/^[0-9a-fA-F]{8}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}$/.test('01234567-9ABC-DEF0-1234-56789ABCDEF0');

or with brackets

/^\{?[0-9a-fA-F]{8}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}‌​\}?$/