form checking

russmichell

Hi there:

I have a loop that checks for empty form fields using the $HTTP_GET_VARS array.

Everything works fine until I add the final
'else {' clause at the end of this snippet, and 'success' is printed to the page.
It does this even if some of the fields were left empty! Does anyone know what could be causing this behaviour??

Heres the code with that final 'else {' clause:
//---loop thru form checking for empty fields
if(isset($submit)) {
while(list($key,$val) = each $HTTP_GET_VARS)) {
if($val = empty($val)) {
$confirm .= "The $key field was left empty! \n";
}//----end if
else if(!(ereg("^{[[:digit:]]{1}$",$teams)))} {
$confirm = "You must put a number into the number of teams field! \n";
}//----end else
else if($password1 != $password2) {
$confirm = "Both passwords need to be the same! \n";
}//---end else
else {
//----everything is a-ok
$confirm = "Success!";
}//----end else
}//----end loop
}//---end if

Many thanks.
Russ

russmichell

Putting this at the end of the loop instead of the 'else{' statement seems to have fixed it:

else if(!($val = empty($val))) {
$confirm = "Success! \n";
}

Cheers
Russ

[deleted]

This loop is a little odd

You loop throught he HTTP_GET_VARS,
and you do check:
if($val = empty($val))

This is wrong on a few points:
1. The '=' is an assignment operator, what you need is a comparison. Use '==' instead

if ($val == empty($val))
This checks to see if $val contains the output of empty($val).
Empty($val) is true if $val contains something other than an empty string or a zero. So you check to see if $val is not 'false' or zero.

The rest of the code just checks two variables that do not change throughout the loop, so you are just checking them over and over again.

...and that is probably also where your problem is.
The $confirm is assigned one value during each iteration of the loop. All the contents of the previous loops gets erased. So if the last loop find that the vars are ok, then you get an 'OK'.

russmichell

Hi Vincent:

Thanks for the pointers. I was v.tired when I wrote that, hence the silly '=' and '==' mixup mistake!

However I still don't seem to be able to get the code doing as I want it.

Even if I dispense with the use of empty(0) and simply to a check thus:

if(($val == 0) || ($val == "")) {
$confirm = "Empty Fields!";
}

The script prints out that all the fields are empty wether they are or not.
I assumed that my above comparison would be performed upon each $HTTP_GET_VARS array element for each loop iteration.

Is this then not the case?
Many thanks.
Russ

Anon

I have this little snippet that works:
if (!$FirstName || !$LastName || !$Phone || !$Email || !$Based)
{
echo "You have not completed all the required fields. Please go back and try again.";
exit;
}

if pwd1 != pwd2{
echo "Passwords don't match. Please go back and try again.";

I think this might work..

[deleted]

What does the full loop look like now?

russmichell

Hi Vincent:

The problem was never really the loop itself. As I had it working several times. It was only when I included a final 'else{' statement that - regardless of empty fields or not, the loop threw me out into that final 'else{' part:

The loop now looks like this, but is essentially the same as when I had the 'empty()' function/construct in it.

//---loop thru form checking for empty fields
if(isset($submit)) {
while(list($key,$val) = each($HTTP_GET_VARS)) {
if(!$val) {
$confirm .= "The '$key' field was left empty!";
}//----end if
else if(!(ereg("^{[[:digit:]]{1}$",$teams)))} {
$confirm = "You must put a number into the number of teams field! \n";
}//----end else
else if($password1 != $password2) {
$confirm = "Both passwords need to be the same! \n";
}//---end else
else {
//----everything is a-ok
$confirm = "Success!";
}//----end else
}//----end loop
}//---end if

Using this above, 'success' is displayed, even if there are some empty fields!

You said something earlier in this thread: "The $confirm is assigned one value during each iteration of the loop. All the contents of the previous loops gets erased.
So if the last loop find that the vars are ok, then you get an 'OK'."

If this is the case then what other method can be used in a loop to print out a message upon discovering empty fields?
I can't believe this should be such a non-straightforward task!!

Thanks for your help so far Vincent.
Russ

[deleted]

It is a straightforward task.

What you want to do is make sure that none of the form fields are empty.
That means you either check for each field manually;

if ($field=='')
{
echo 'field empty';
};

etc etc.

Or you create a loop that checks all the vars you can find:

while(list($key,$val) = each($HTTP_GET_VARS))
{
if ($val=='')
{
echo $key.' empty';
};
};

To get the result of 'fields empty' or 'no fields empty' you only have to set the var to 'fields empty' or not:

$fields_empty = 'no';
while(list($key,$val) = each($HTTP_GET_VARS))
{
if ($val=='')
{
echo $key.' empty';
$fields_empty = 'yes';
};
};

echo $fields_empty;

Now, if no fields are empty, the fields_empty var is never changed, so it says 'no'. If a field is empty, the IF statement will match and set the fields_empty var to 'yes'.
Notice that the var is NOT reset to 'no' inside the loop.

Big thing to note here is that you start the checks with 'everything is ok'
then while you check you change that to 'fields missing' if there are any missing.
If a field is not empty, then that is no cause for alarm, and you should NOT reset the status to 'no fields missing'

russmichell

Vincent:

Your help is very much appraciated.
For anyone coming across this thread, here is the code embodied within a function:

//----function "checkval()" loops thru an array checking for empty values
//----1). takes an array as an argument
function checkval($array) {
$confirm = "no";
while(list($key,$val) = each($array)) {
if ($val == '') {
$confirm = "The $key field is empty!";
return $confirm;
}
}//---end while
}//----end function

Cheers
Russ