Email Validation

[jonathen]

Hi all,

I'm working on a new project; a competition form for my site. Whilst most of it is simple enough, there is one thing I'd like to be able to do, but am unsyre of how to achieve it.

One of the fields within my form will be for the competitor's email address. However, due to people using spoof addresses, I need to be able to validate it in such a way, that when the form is filled out, it submits to a database which has one column called "validated" with the entry "No". This much is easy enough for me to do. However...

What I want is for the user, upon submission, to be emailed a validation email that has a limited shelf-life which has a dynamic link contained within it asking them to "click here to validate your entry" which once clicked on, changes "No" to "Yes" to their row id in the database under the "validated" column, and informs the competitor that their entry has been accepted.

I have seen similar things on some sign up scripts (for forums etc) but not in the way I am looking for.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

Jonathen

[jek]

Can't you just add a field in your database called validation_string or something. And when you send out a validation email to someone you include a random string (which you also insert into the database into the new field). Then all you have to do is check if the mail contains the correct string...

[jonathen]

Ah, good point! That's something to work on. Thanks.

[jek]

No probs... Hope it works out for you mate.