Tag Archives: tutorial

Validating emails with php

  1. Sanitizing and validating email syntax
    $email = $_POST['email']; //getting the posted email
    //sanitizing the email using FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL
    //removes all illegal e-mail characters from a string
    $email=filter_var($email, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
    //validating the email using FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL
    //validates e-mail returning true if valid and false if invalid
    (filter_var($field, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) ? TRUE : FALSE;
  2. Creating a function to validate and sanitize
    function check($email)  {
         $field=filter_var($field, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
         return (filter_var($field, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) ? TRUE : FALSE;
    }

    Usage:

    $email = $_POST['email'];
    if (check($email)==TRUE){
    //send email
    }else{
    echo "Invalid email!";
    }

Sending emails with php

  1. Set up the variables:
    $to = "email@address.com"; //where the email will go 
    $subject = "Our Subject"; //the subject 
    $message = "The message to send"; //the message 
    $from = "you@email.com"; //from email 
    $header = "From: $from"; //header including the from email
  2. Sending the email:
    mail($to, $subject, $message, $header); //send the email
  3. Sending the email and returning a success or failure message
    echo (mail($to, $subject,$message, $header)) ? "Email sent" : "Error sending email" ;
  4. Setting header to send html email:
    $header = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n"; 
    $header .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n"; //add content type 
    $header .= "From: $from"; //header including the from email
  5. Creating a function to send emails:
    function mailit ($to,$subject,$message,$from){ 
    $headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n"; 
    $headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n"; 
    $headers .= "From: <$from>" . "\r\n"; 
    return (mail($to, $subject,$message, $headers)) ? TRUE : FALSE; 
    }

    Usage:

    $to = "email@address.com"; //where the email will go 
    $subject = "Our Subject"; //the subject 
    $message = "<strong>Message</strong>The html message"; //the message 
    $from = "you@email.com"; //from email 
    echo (mailit($to,$subject,$message,$from )==FALSE) ? "Sending Failed!" : "Mail sent!" ;