Sending HTTP Post Data Without Using a Form
I always forget how to do this and it’s really useful… http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/12039/fid/51
Using Stored Values With Select Elements
Heres how to use regular expressions to transform a plain HTML select element into one that autoselects based on a previous choice. You could use this to retrieve a value from a database and automatically select the correct option in a dropdown menu. The select element in the example below is called occupation and it is stored in an array called $user_data.
search for:
<option value=”(.*)”>.*</option>
replace with:
<option value=”$1″<?php if ($user_data['occupation'] == “$1″) { echo ‘ selected=”selected”‘; } ?>>$1</option>
Make sure to rename the fields accordingly for your situation.
Simple UK Phone Number Validation
This is a simple solution which should help a lot with accidental errors, but it’s still very easy for someone to enter a fake number if they want to. The first line of code removes anything thats not a number from a submitted post variable called ‘phone’. The second line checks the number begins with a 0, followed by 1-9 (’00′ is not allowed as it’s the UK dialling prefix for international calls), followed by 8 or 9 other digits. The example below works with PHP 5.2.0 & above.
- echo 'Please enter your phone number correctly';
- }
Simple Email Validation
Starting with PHP 5.2.0 there is a really easy way to validate email addresses - namely the filter_input function. The example below takes a submitted POST variable called ‘email’, validates it against the email format, and returns FALSE if the filter fails or the value of the variable on success.
- $email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);
Thats all there is to it.