PHP Valid Email

[energysuperstore09]

I have a login page where they have to regsiter for a login and password, but I want to make sure they enter a valid email address.

 

Does anybody know how I would do that?

[revraz]

And what do you want to use to determine the address is valid?

 

You can use RegEx for the format, or you can make them reply to a email with a code.

[energysuperstore09]

what would the process be to have them reply to an email with a code.

[lonewolf217]

check this out to programatically make sure the email is valid

http://www.totallyphp.co.uk/code/validate_an_email_address_using_regular_expressions.htm

[energysuperstore09]

So i would use this? 

 

<?php

$email = "[email protected]";

if(eregi("^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$", $email)) {
  echo "Valid email address.";
}
else {
  echo "Invalid email address.";
}

?>

[Brian W]

I you want to make sure the email address actually even looks like an email address, Try this tutorial, its came in very handy to me when writing regex. Check the Matching Patterns section for the email validation code.

 

If you want to validate their email address, once they enter the address you'd create a random string

(something like md5(rand()."salt string")) and save the string, and there email address in a table with 2 other fields, a unique id and a field determining whether or not the email has been validated. Use the random string in a url like www.domain.com/validate.php?key=flhdi7fgi3hkjnfp92u2hl9f3 and email that to them... they click on the link and when they get there the table is updated to say that that email address has been validated.

[Brian W]

So i would use this? 

 

<?php

$email = "[email protected]";

if(eregi("^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$", $email)) {
  echo "Valid email address.";
}
else {
  echo "Invalid email address.";
}

?>

 

Looks like it would work

[energysuperstore09]

so i used the code that i posted and i put a email address that didn't even have the @ symbol in it and it echoed that it was a valid email address. 

 

any advise as I am new to the php thing

[energysuperstore09]

I want to discourge people from using fictisous emails just to get login info

[Brian W]

use the one I suggested    lol, by just reading it I don't see whats wrong with it, but I'm not the greatest at regexp

[lonewolf217]

its entirely possible there is something wrong with the regex. I didn't write it, i just did a google search and picked a result.

 

You can do your own search, pick a regex function to try and see if it works.  There's tons of them out there

 

edit: i tested it and the regex works just fine

 

"[email protected]" validates

"someoneexample.com" does not validate

[premiso]

Untested, but I would suggest against eregi as it is being depreciated.

 

<?php
$email = "[email protected]";

$pattern = '/^([a-z0-9])(([-a-z0-9._])*([a-z0-9]))*\@([a-z0-9])' .
'(([a-z0-9-])*([a-z0-9]))+' . '(\.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])?([a-z0-9])+)+$/i';

$valid = preg_match($pattern, $email);

if ($valid == 1) {
    echo 'Valid email';
}else {
    echo 'InValid email';
}

?>

 

Pulled from preg_match user comments.

 

That will only solve the issue of a valid email address. To make sure the domain has an mx record you can use checkdnsrr to validate that portion (the host part):

 

<?php
function validateEmail($email) {
   list(,$host) = explode("@", $email);

   if (empty($host)) 
      return false;

   if (!checkdnsrr($host, "MX")) 
      return false;
    $pattern = '/^([a-z0-9])(([-a-z0-9._])*([a-z0-9]))*\@([a-z0-9])' .
     '(([a-z0-9-])*([a-z0-9]))+' . '(\.([a-z0-9])([-a-z0-9_-])?([a-z0-9])+)+$/i';

   return preg_match($pattern, $email);
}

if (validateEmail('[email protected]')) {
    echo 'Email valid.';
}else {
    echo 'Email not valid.';
}
?>

 

The code above is untested, so may have issues with syntax, fix those and it should work.

[revraz]

There are many examples in the RegEx forum here.

 

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/board,43.0.html