Preventing junk entries

wirenot

Hi all,
I setup a small website (http://www.newsinmotion.net) it works fine and everything was great until I decided to log into the database. Some people clealy do not read the fact that they need to confirm their email addresses and still register with asdf@asdef.com and cr@p like that . GRRRRRR, wasting my resources when I am providing free service.

I parse all email addresses through
preg_match('/^{[-A-Za-z0-9.]+[@][A-Za-z0-9-]+([.][A-Za-z0-9-]+)*[.][A-Za-z]{2,8}$/',} $POST['email'])

but is there anything else I can do to prevent people entering junk into the DB?? They can't even use the service if they do it, so why do they bother.... Well if anyone can help and or has any suggestions, their all welcome.

Thanx.

LordShryku

You could send out a "confirmation email". Using [man]getmxrr[/man] can help too.

wirenot

I do send out confirmation emails before their accoutn is activated. It even clearly says so when you signup. However, I still have to put all their info in teh main DB so they can login and setup different things while confirmations msgs are being delivered.

nicolai

How about using a timestamp when users submit. Then run a query once a week removing all the entries which are over 7 days old and have not yet been activated.

Best regards Nico

wirenot

Nico,
The entries are timestamped, so I can setup a cronjob to do that, ist not a problem. However, then the user_id numbers which are generated by auto_incrememnt will be out of order. Does that matter, or not at all?

-Thanks,
Mikhail

Roger_Ramjet

Missing autoinc nos only matter if you write code that makes them matter, if you get what I mean.

If missing nos matter (eg it can worry the hell out of auditors if sequential invoice nos are missing) then you will have to write your own autoinc that you can control and roll-back.

So far as the db is concerned it matters not if there are nos missing from the sequence.

You could try using another table to hold the info. As soon as the user 'activates' the account you insert the data into the live table as a part of the activation procedure.