Best Way To Check If Form Field Is Set?

[phprocker]

Hey all. What is the best way to check if a form field has been entered by the user? Because a field left blank by the user still shows up as set with the isset function.

 

Example:

if (isset($_POST['name']))
{
echo "The field is set";
}

 

This is a problem if I'm checking if the user has skipped over the name field on a form because an empty value gets passed to the POST array even if the field is left blank.

 

Do people use empty or a regular expression instead?

 

Cheers!

[DarkRanger]

I use

 

if ( $_POST['name']=="" || $_POST['name']==NULL )
{
echo "The field is NOT set";
}

perhaps this is what you want??

[Pikachu2000]

Since it's reasonable to assume that a name should have at least one character:

if( isset($_POST['name']) ) {
$name = trim($_POST['name']);
if( strlen($name < 1 ) ) {
	// name is invalid, error condition exists
} else {
	// name has at least one character
}
}

[coupe-r]

You can also do:

 

if(!empty($_POST['name']) && isset($_POST['name']))

{

    echo 'Field is not empty and is set';

}

else

{

  echo 'Your field is empty';

}

[Porl123]

You can just check whether the string is blank and use isset. It's good practice to use isset because of undefined index errors.

[phprocker]

Thanks for the great input guys. All clear now.

 

Cheers!

[Pikachu2000]

You can also do:

 

if(!empty($_POST['name']) && isset($_POST['name']))

{

    echo 'Field is not empty and is set';

}

else

{

  echo 'Your field is empty';

}

 

You can just check whether the string is blank and use isset. It's good practice to use isset because of undefined index errors.

 

Unfortunately, both of those will allow a space in a field, by itself to pass as valid input.