Question

A user enters a password, say 'tomorrow1234'. I’m aware that I can split it into an array with str_split, but after that, I want to go through each value and search them for things such as capitalization, number, or white space.

How would I go about doing this?

Answer 1

This is an old standby function I use to valiate password complexity. It requires that the password contains upper and lowercase letters, as well as non-alpha characters. Length checks are trivial and are handled elsewhere.

$req_regex = array(
    '/[A-Z]/',      //uppercase
    '/[a-z]/',      //lowercase
    '/[^A-Za-z]/'   //non-alpha
);

foreach($req_regex as $regex) {
    if( !preg_match($regex, $password) ) {
        return NULL;
    }
}

I use the array and a loop so it’s easy to add/remove conditions if necessary.