PHP - Form Validation

    In forms, some of the fields are important and it is necessary that we validate it those fields are filled or not. PHP supports two types of validation:

    • Client-side validation - validation is done on the client-side web browser.
    • Server-side validation - after the submission of the data, the data is sent to the server where it is being validated on the server-side.

    How to validate the URL

    $website = input($_POST["website"]);
    if (!preg_match("/\b(?:(?:https?|ftp):\/\/|www\.)[-a-z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-a-z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|]/i",$website)) {
       $websiteErr = "Invalid URL"; 
    }

    How to validate the Email

    $db_email = input($_POST["email"]);
    if (!filter_var($db_email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
       $emailErr = "Invalid email format and please re-enter email"; 
    }

    Example:

    <html>
       <head>
        <style>
          .error {color: #FF0000;}
        </style>
       </head>
       <body>
          <?php
             // defining variables and setting them to empty values
             $nameErr = $emailErr = "";
             $name = $email = "";
    if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
                if (empty($_POST["name"])) {
                   $nameErr = "Name is required";
                }else {
                   $name = test_input($_POST["name"]);
                }            
                if (empty($_POST["email"])) {
                   $emailErr = "Email is required";
                }else {
                   $email = test_input($_POST["email"]);               
                   // check if e-mail address is in correct format
                   if (!filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
                      $emailErr = "Invalid email format"; 
                   }
                }
    function test_input($data) {
                $data = trim($data);
                $data = stripslashes($data);
                $data = htmlspecialchars($data);
                return $data;
             }
          ?>     
          <h2>Classes Registration</h2>
         <p><span class = "error">* enter required field.</span></p>
         <form method = "post" action = "<?php 
             echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]);?>">
             <table>
                <tr>
                   <td>Name:</td>
                   <td><input type = "text" name = "name">
                      <span class = "error">* <?php echo $nameErr;?></span>
                   </td>
                </tr>           
                <tr>
                   <td>E-mail: </td>
                   <td><input type = "text" name = "email">
                      <span class = "error">* <?php echo $emailErr;?></span>
                   </td>
                </tr>
              <td>
                   <input type = "submit" name = "submit" value = "Submit"> 
                </td>
             </table>
          </form>
          <?php
             echo "<h2>Your values are:</h2>";
             echo $name;
             echo "<br>";
             echo $email;
             echo "<br>";
    ?>
    </body>
    </html>

    Output Classes Registration

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