required fields

Anon

I'm trying to get a field to be required....

I have 2 pages....the form page and the action page.....where do I check for the validation?

Quite simply, all I would like to do is check to see if a variable has been populated, if it hasn't then the user can't go on to the action page.

Despite being relatively new to PHP, this doesn't seem like a tough concept, but nothing I try seems to help.

I've used the following commands with no success:

<?php

if ($name == 0) { echo ("Sorry this is a required field"); }

someone please help!

Anon

Jay,

Change your code to

if ($name == "") echo ("Sorry this is a required field");

That's because if the user leaves the name field empty, it will not be filled with 0, it will be filled with nothing (""). Note that I also eliminated some curly braces in your code. If you only have one line depending on the if clause, I think this is a little cleaner.

Back to your question... you want to have PHP check this variable on the 'action' page. You might also want to look into putting some javascript on the 'form' page to check it there, but if you realy want the field to be required, never rely on javascript alone.

Hope this helps.

Vincent

Anon

Can I not just use PHP w/o Javascript?

Anon

Yes, of course you can. I just said that you might want to check the field in javascript in addition to checking it in PHP.

Anon

OK, here's what happens:

I changed the code like you suggested in the action.phtml page...but if the field wasn't populated, it would print the "sorry..." statement but still send and email notification to me....how come?

So I fill out the form > Don't answer a required field > Hit submit....goes to the action page where it's all laid out like I programmed but up in the upper right hand corner it says "sorry....."

Anon

Oh,

You need to do something like:

if ( $name == "" ) {
echo "sorry...";
} else {
// send the form here.
}

The it will only send the form if the name field was not blank.

Vincent Vatter

Anon

Javascript is a better approach if you want to inform the user of the error before hitting the server with the action. The checking is done on the client side before the data is actually submitted. Remember, PHP is a 'Server' side technology. However, if you want the incorrect submission to be logged via e-mail your approach is better.

I personally wouldn't do it that way as I know I would be constantly bombarded with e-mail from users who didn't fill the form out properly. If you can imagine being hit with e-mail several times while a user bumbles his way through your form... ICK.. haha

Mike

Jay Goodman wrote:

Can I not just use PHP w/o Javascript?