e-mail adress validation

[Flutje]

I 'wrote' my very first PHP script and I am rather proud of it 🙂
It's a form and it looks like this

<?
$mailto = "[e-mail]" ;
$subject = "Contactformulier" ;
$formurl = "http://www.albruna.nl/formulier.html" ;
$errorurl = "http://www.albruna.nl/fout.html" ;
$thankyouurl = "http://www.albruna.nl/dankuwel.html" ;
$name = $POST['name'] ;
$adress = $POST['adress'];
$place = $POST['place'];
$email = $POST['email'] ;
$comments = $_POST['comments'] ;
$http_referrer = getenv( "HTTP_REFERER" );

if (!isset($POST['email'])) {
header( "Location: $formurl" );
exit ;
}
if (empty($POST['name']) || empty($POST['email']) || empty($POST['comments'])) {
header( "Location: $errorurl" );
exit ;
}

$messageproper =

"This message was sent from:\n" .
"$http_referrer\n" .
"------------------------- opmerkingen -------------------------\n\n" .
"name:".$name . "\n".
"adress:".$adress . "\n".
"place:".$place . "\n".
"email:".$email . "\n".
$comments .
"\n\n------------------------------------------------------------\n" ;

mail($mailto, $subject, $messageproper, "From: \"$name\" <$email>\nReply-To: \"$name\" <$email>\nX-Mailer: chfeedback.php 2.01" );
header( "Location: $thankyouurl" );
exit ;

?>

It works great but what I really want to achive is that if an e-mail adress is not properly filled in it would go to the error page (fout.html). So if someone forgets the @ or the . it would send that person to the error page. Now it only does that if nothing has been filled in the e-mail field
But how I have looked at it and searched for tutorials and tried all sorts of different things I can't get it done.

Can anyone here explain to me how to tackle this 'problem'?

Greetings from a totall newbie to PHP.

Martin

[planetsim]

youd need to use regex

So something like this

preg_match("/^([a-zA-Z0-9])+([.a-zA-Z0-9_-])*@([a-zA-Z0-9_-])+(.[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)+[a-zA-Z0-9_-]$/",$_POST['email']);

then to intergrate it into your script

$mailto = "[e-mail]" ;
$subject = "Contactformulier" ;
$formurl = "http://www.albruna.nl/formulier.html" ;
$errorurl = "http://www.albruna.nl/fout.html" ;
$thankyouurl = "http://www.albruna.nl/dankuwel.html" ;
$name = $_POST['name'] ;
$adress = $_POST['adress'];
$place = $_POST['place'];
$email = $_POST['email'] ;
$comments = $_POST['comments'] ;
$http_referrer = getenv( "HTTP_REFERER" );

if (!isset($_POST['email'])) {
header( "Location: $formurl" );
exit ;
}
if (empty($_POST['name']) || empty($_POST['email']) || empty($_POST['comments'])) {
header( "Location: $errorurl" );
exit ;
}

if(preg_match("/^([a-zA-Z0-9])+([.a-zA-Z0-9_-])*@([a-zA-Z0-9_-])+(.[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)+[a-zA-Z0-9_-]$/",$_POST['email']) != 1){
header( "Location: $errorurl" );
exit ;
}


$messageproper =

"This message was sent from:\n" .
"$http_referrer\n" .
"------------------------- opmerkingen -------------------------\n\n" .
"name:".$name . "\n".
"adress:".$adress . "\n".
"place:".$place . "\n".
"email:".$email . "\n".
$comments .
"\n\n------------------------------------------------------------\n" ;

mail($mailto, $subject, $messageproper, "From: \"$name\" <$email>\nReply-To: \"$name\" <$email>\nX-Mailer: chfeedback.php 2.01" );
header( "Location: $thankyouurl" );
exit ; 

Now that isnt tested to see if it all works but you should get the basic idea i hope.

You can goto zend.com the tutorials here or search google.com about regex or regular expressions, as well of course the manual

[phpmaven]

I would go to Google Groups and do a search on "php email
address validation" (don't use the quotes) and you will see quite a bit of discussion on this.

[planetsim]

or he could just use the code i gave him and search up regex which will help a lot.

[Flutje]

Thanks folks.

First I will see if it works like this. But I will also look for regex and email validation so I can learn to do this myself in future and understand what you actually wrote:-)

Greetings from Martin

[Norman_Graham]

Hi Martin

At the risk of telling you what you already know ... you're probably familiar with MS Word and with its search and replace dialogue. You know that you can search for types of strings using pattern matching, right? Well what that is is a GUI for applying regular expressions chosen from a very limited set - you'll notice that the symbols that appear, e.g. *, ^?, [A-Z], are in many cases the same as provided by regex() or preg_match() in PHP or by the =~ operator in Perl. What Planetsim has given you is a whole series of pattern-matching routines which check the e-mail address against possible correct formats and then produce an error if none of the possible correct formats are matched. This won't stop the user from entering [e-mail] (which is a valid e-mail address on the face of it), but it will stop them from entering loser@aol and expecting it to work

You have an educational weekend, you hear, and if you find yourself wailing and gnashing your teeth at any time, surf on over to http://regexlib.com

Norm 🙂

[Flutje]

Thanks for clearing some of this stuff up for me Norm. I indeed have an educational weekedn ahead:p

Thanks also for the url. I will check it out. It's still all a bit puzzeling but in time I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.😕 I hope😃

Martin