Form Validation using PHP
Filed Under (Forms, Web Design) by Dave on 05-17-2008
Tagged Under : form validation, html & php E-mail form, PHP email script
On an earlier tutorial I wrote about how to create and send an email form using html and a basic php script. Today I’ll take it up a level and re-write that script using the if, else conditional and empty() function to include form validation.
Using an if, else conditional: if (condition) {do something} else { do this} , we can make certain fields of our form required that they be filled out. Let’s start by making a basic form with first name, last name, email and comments as our text inputs. Copy the following code into a text document then save and name it form.html:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ />
<title>Feedback Form</title>
<style type=”text/css”>
<!–
#form {
width: 500px;
margin-right: auto;
margin-left: auto;
}
–>
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id=”form”>
<form action=”sendmail.php” method=”post”>
<fieldset><legend>Enter your information in the form below.</legend><br />
First Name:<br/>
<input type=”text” name=”fname” size=”20″ maxlength=”40″ /><br /><br />
Last Name:<br/>
<input type=”text” name=”lname” size=”40″ maxlength=”60″/><br /><br />
E-Mail:<br />
<input type=”text” name=”email” size=”40″ maxlength=”60″/><br /><br />
Comments:<br />
<textarea name=”comments” cols=”40″ rows=”7″/></textarea>
</fieldset>
<div align=”center”><input type=”reset” />
<input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”Submit my information” /></div>
</form>
</div>
</body>
</html>
The action for the form is the same as the last form tutorial (send.php) but we’ll re-write it now to include the changes. The easiest way to check to see if a user has typed in a value in the text boxes is to use the empty() function. Using the old send.php the code looked like this for the Name variable: $msg = “Name; $_POST[name]\n”; . Using the empty() function and an if, else conditional to make sure the user typed in a value for the “first name” text box, the revised script is written like this:
if (!empty($_POST['fname'])){
$msg = “fname; $_POST[fname]\n”;
}else{
$fname = NULL;
echo “Please fill out your first name.<br />”;
}
In the above script the empty() function checks to see if the “first name” box has a value. If yes, the value of the $fname variable would be sent to the recipients email. If the box is empty the $fname variable is set to NULL and the user sees the message “please fill out your first name” followed by a line break <br />. The “\n” that you see in the string simply adds a line break to the information being sent so that when the recipient receives the email, its not one continuous line.
So, the entire PHP script to check all text inputs is:
<?php
if (!empty($_POST['fname'])){
$msg = “fname; $_POST[fname]\n”;
}else{
$fname = NULL;
echo “Please fill out your first name.<br />”;
}
if (!empty($_POST['lname'])){
$msg .= “lname: $_POST[lname]\n”;
}else{
$lname = NULL;
echo “Please fill out your last name.<br />”;
}
if (!empty($_POST['email'])){
$msg .= “email: $_POST[email]\n”;
}else{
$email = NULL;
echo “Please leave your email address.<br />”;
}
if (!empty($_POST['comments'])){
$msg .= “comments: $_POST[comments]\n”;
}else{
$comments = NULL;
echo “You forgot to leave a comment.<br />”;
}
$recipient = “yourname@yourdomain.com”;
$subject = “Form Feedback”;
$mailheaders = “Reply-to: $_POST[email]“;
//send the mail
mail($recipient, $subject, $msg, $mailheaders);
?>
Put this between the body tags of a new html document (make sure to change the $recipient to your email address) then save and name it send.php . Style the form.html to match your website then upload both the form.html and send.php to your server in the same directory you keep all of your other web site pages, and your done.
Nice Site!
http://google.com
nice work
Nice, I’m going to try this out