Example 140: Email Address Validation (PHP)

Description:	This example will demonstrate how to validate a properly constructed email address submitted from a form in a PHP program.
	-This example uses regular expressions to do the validation.

$msg

Start with a "PHP Simple Page" template.

Add the following HTML code after <div id="contents"> on the \'MainSeg\' segment:

       <form name="val_email" action="validate_email.php" method="POST">
         <input type="hidden" name="task" value="val">
          <table>
            <tr>
             <td>Enter email Address:<input type="text" name="email" size="30">
             <input type="submit" value="Validate Email Address"></td>
            </tr>
           </table> 
          </form>
          

          <?php echo $msg; ?>

In the PHP- Source Code create a global variable $msg.
-This will be the message telling your users whether or not they entered a valid email address.
```
            global $msg;
                      
```

In the PHP Source code, substitute this code:

   if ($pf_task == \'default\')
	   generic();

With this code:

   switch($pf_task)
   {
	  case \'default\':
	  generic();
      break;
	
	  case \'val\':
	  validate();
	  break;
    }

Create the validate function.
Add this code under the generic function:

function validate()
 {
  // Make all global variables available here
  foreach($GLOBALS as $arraykey=>$arrayvalue) 
	{
	 if($arraykey[0]!=\'_\' && $arraykey != \'GLOBALS\')
	 global $$arraykey;
	}

  $email = $_POST["email"];
  if(!eregi("^[_a-z0-9-]+(\\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\\.[a-z]{2,3})$", $email))
   	$msg = "Please enter a valid email address";
  else
    $msg = "You have entered a valid email address";
    
  wrtseg(\'MainSeg\');
	
 }

Compile and run your progam.

Program Definition: validate_email.pdw

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