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Main PDF 5 - PHP Web Forms and Form Validation

This document covers PHP web forms and form validation, focusing on superglobal variables like $_GET, $_POST, $_REQUEST, and their uses in form processing. It explains the differences between cookies and sessions for data storage and security, as well as the syntax for validating user inputs using regular expressions. Additionally, it provides examples of regex patterns and functions for efficient text searching and validation.

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Charles Uy
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
5 views

Main PDF 5 - PHP Web Forms and Form Validation

This document covers PHP web forms and form validation, focusing on superglobal variables like $_GET, $_POST, $_REQUEST, and their uses in form processing. It explains the differences between cookies and sessions for data storage and security, as well as the syntax for validating user inputs using regular expressions. Additionally, it provides examples of regex patterns and functions for efficient text searching and validation.

Uploaded by

Charles Uy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Applications Development and

Emerging Technologies
MODULE 5
PHP Web Forms and Form
Validation
PHP Predefined Functions

Objectives
• To apply the available super global variables for form
processing and validation.
• To differentiate the use of $_GET, $_POST, and
$_REQUEST super global variable in form processing and
know when to use it.
• To differentiate the use of Session and Cookies for form
security of a Web Site.
• To know the proper syntax for validating user inputs using
Regular Expression.
Superglobal variables

• $_SERVER
• is an array containing information such as headers, paths, and script
locations.
• entries were created by the web server
• Index ‘PHP_SELF’ contains the filename of the currently executing script.
• $_GET
• an associative array variables passed to the current script via the URL
parameters.
• $_POST
• an associative array of variables passed to the current script via the HTTP
POST method.
Superglobal variables

• $_REQUEST
• an associative array that by default contains the contents of $_GET,
$_POST, and $_COOKIE
• $_COOKIE
• an associative array of variables passed to the current script via HTTP
Cookies
• $_SESSION
• an associative array containing session variables available to the script
• $_ENV
• an associative array of variables passed to the current script via the
environment method
Superglobal variables

Example:
Superglobal variables

Output: before button was clicked Output: submit get button was clicked

Output: submit post button was clicked


Cookies

• are mechanism for storing data in the remote browser and thus tracking or
identifying return users.
• small amount of information containing variable=value pair (user’s
computer).
• users can refuse to accepts cookies.
• Managing cookies can be done using setcookie() function
• syntax: setcookie()
bool setcookie ( string $name [, string $value [, int
$expire = 0 [, string $path [, string $domain [, bool
$secure = false [, bool $httponly = false ]]]]]] )
Cookies

Example: PHPSetCookies.php Output 1: cookies were set

Example: PHPDisplayCookies.php Output 2: after 10 secs

Example: PHPDeleteCookies.php Output 3: delete cookies


Session

• are mechanism for storing data on the server itself.


• is the time that a user spends at your Web site.
• more secure than cookies and can store much more information
• to open a session use session_start() function
• always set at the beginning of each Web page.
• to close the session use session_destroy() function
• gets rid of all the session variable information that’s stored in the session
file.
• the statement does not affect the variables set on the current page.
Session

• to unset session variables use unset() function


• syntax
unset($_SESSION[‘varname’]);

Example: PHPSetSession.php

Example: PHPUnsetSession.php
Session

Example: PHPDisplaySession.php

Example: PHPDeleteSession.php
Session

Output: user load PHPDisplaySession.php page


Output: user clicked the Login link

Output: user clicked the email link

Output: user clicked the logout link


Regular Expression

• were used to efficiently search for patterns in a given text.


• also known as regex or regexp.
• PHP implements Percl Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE)
• PCRE function starts with preg_
• preg_match() function
• Performs a regular expression match
• Syntax: int preg_match ( string $pattern , string
$subject [, array &$matches [, int $flags = 0 [, int
$offset = 0 ]]] )
Regular Expression

Regex Meta Characters

Symbol Description
^ Marks the start of a string
$ Marks the end of a string
. Matches any single character
| Boolean OR
() Group elements
[abc] Item range (a,b or c)
[^abc] Not in range (every character except a,b, or c)
\s white-space character
a? Zero or one ‘a’ character. Equals to a{0,1}
a* Zero or more of ‘a’
Regular Expression

Regex Meta Characters (continue)

Symbol Description
a+ One or more of ‘a’
a{2} Exactly two of ‘a’
a{,5} Up to five of ‘a’
a{5,10} Between five to ten of ‘a’
\w Any alpha numeric character plus underscore. Equals to
[A-Za-z0-9_]
\W Any non alpha numeric characters
\s Any white-space character
\S Any non white-space character
\d Any digits. Equal to [0-9]
\D Any non-digits. Equal to [^0-9]
Regular Expression

Regex Pattern Modifiers

Description
i Ignore Case
m Multiline Mode
S Extra analysis of pattern
u Pattern is treated as UTF-8
Regular Expression

Example

Example Description
‘/hello/’ It will match the word hello
‘/^hello/’ It will match hello at the start of a string. Possible matches
are hello orhelloworld, but not worldhello
‘/hello$/’ It will match hello at the end of a string.
‘/he.o/’ It will match any character between he and o. Possible
matches are heloor heyo, but not hello
‘/he?llo/’ It will match either llo or hello
‘/hello+/’ It will match hello on or more time. E.g. hello or hellohello
‘/he*llo/’ Matches llo, hello or hehello, but not hellooo
‘/hello|world/’ It will either match the word hello or world
‘/(A-Z)/’ Using it with the hyphen character, this pattern will match
every uppercase character from A to Z. E.g. A, B, C…
Regular Expression

Example: (continue)

Example Description
‘/[abc]/’ It will match any single character a, b or c
‘/abc{1}/’ Matches precisely one c character after the characters ab.
E.g. matchesabc, but not abcc
‘/abc{1,}/’ Matches one or more c character after the characters ab.
E.g. matches abcor abcc
‘/abc{2,4}/’ Matches between two and four c character after the
characters ab. E.g. matches abcc, abccc or abcccc, but
not abc
Regular Expression

Useful Regex Functions


Email validation

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