function to validate email

msimonds

I am creating a form and one item inside the form (of course) is an email address field which I am trying to validate and make sure it is correct email structure.

I have found many tutorials online and none seem to work:

my code:

setting the variable

$email      =       trim($_POST['email']);

checking to see if the user has entered something into the email textbox

$problem = FALSE;

 if (empty ($email))     //check for email address
        {
		$problem = TRUE;
		echo '<p>You forgot to enter your email address, Please hit the back button and fill in the missin information</p>';
	    }

From the form:

<tr>
            <td align="right">*&nbsp;Email Address:&nbsp;</td>
            <td align="left"><input name="email" type="text" maxlength="50" /></td>
        </tr>

How can I check to see if the email is in the correct format. I am not necessarly worried about it actually being a correct email address

msimonds

I tried to do a nested if. I am trying to check to see if the email address is in the correct format and if the text area is filled

if (!valid_email($email))
    {
        if (empty($email))
            {
            $problem = TRUE;
		    echo '<p>You forgot to enter your email address, Please hit the back button and fill in the missin information</p>';
            }

    $problem = TRUE;
	echo '<p>Your email address is not correctly formatted, please push the back button and correct the error</p>';
}

Here is the function:

function valid_email($email)
{
      $pattern = "^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$";

  if (eregi($pattern, $email))
  {
     return true;
  }
  else
  {
     return false;
  }
}

it does either or, but not both

any help would be appreciated!

Thanks

Mike

shonuff

Something more along the lines of this...

$problem = FALSE;
if (empty($email))//check for email address
{
$problem = TRUE;
echo '<p>You forgot to enter your email address, Please hit the back button and fill in the missing information</p>';
} 
elseif (!valid_email($email))//Check validity of email
{
$problem = TRUE;
echo '<p>Your email address is not correctly formatted, please push the back button and correct the error</p>';
}

msimonds

Thanks Shonuff that worked perfectly, I truly appreciate it!!!