php validation frustration

yahyac

Whew. Gotta just let it out.

You know, learning a bit of php this past week has been a struggle, and I feel that I've accomplished a lot. Shopping cart is mostly working, which is really nice. Most of my site has come together with php. I just finished the client-side (java) validation of the order forms, and even that wasn't too bad.

But this php form validation is getting me.

I've searched on these forums. Searched for examples online. And either there aren't easy to understand examples available, or maybe it's just harder than i expected.

Here's an example tutorial I found online, and really, it seemed like one of the best ones.
http://codewalkers.com/tutorials/47/3.html

Could someone, who has experience with server side validation, click on that link and then click "next" on a couple of pages until they give the full-fledged example and tell me if this is how it is supposed to work.

It just seems so difficult. I mean, the client side was easy. Is the server side validation really difficult? or maybe i'm making it so.

Would love some ideas or explanation.

yahyac

Out of five forms, two with only one field (yippee!) and the others with over ten, I just finished the server side validation on one of the forms with only one field of input, and it is working.

I used the aforementioned link/tutorial as a guide to setup the validation. Granted, this is my first time doing this, and I'm generally good at picking things up, but this just seemed like a pain.

Just curious if there is a better, more efficient way, or if this is just how it is done.

Thanks.

yahyac

Could anyone post some feedback if this is correct or not. If so, I'll go ahead and finish these other four pages.

Thanks.

etully

If you give a few examples of what you're trying to validate and show us how you are doing it, we can tell you if you're basically on the right track. I'm guessing that what you're finding difficult is regular expressions? They are not unique to PHP... in fact, PHP is just re-using the syntax that exists for regular expressions from other places like Perl. And yes, they can be very clumsy to read and write.

yahyac

As mentioned on the first post, i'm basically duplicating this example:
http://codewalkers.com/tutorials/47/8.html

I obviously am using our own form. If you go to that page, it shows an example of a form and the php needed to do the validation. At the top, they include several functions, which you can see by clicking "Previous" and look at the pages where they show the functions.

Actually, i am not having any problems with the regular expressions, as if you look at that site, they make the functions for you. You simply need to call them. So that was nice.

Just, seemed difficult on how they implemented their example with the $valid variable and other such things.

But again, this may just be the reality of server-side validation, in which case, I'll just have to get used to it. Just want to confirm that this is a good example and that they basically followed standard validation protocol.

Thanks.

etully

I see. I just looked at codewalker's site and their script is decent. My programming style is different so my pages don't look exactly like that but that's just a matter of technique. Everyone develops their own style over time. But to your question, their code is good and they are teaching you good habits. I agree that their "$valid" technique is a little cumbersome, I might do it a little differently, but not much differently. You should feel confident doing it this way for now.