Question

I am working on a comment form for a website and trying to secure against spammers. I have taken the validEmail function from this link.

I am not very experienced at using functions. Is this the proper way to call the function and validate the user’s email address? Any suggestions appreciated. Thank you

$email = $_POST['email'];

if (validEmail($email)) {

$to      = '[e-mail]';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: [e-mail]';

mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

print "Form submitted successfully: <br>Your name is <b>".$_POST['cname']."</b> and your email is <b>".$_POST['email']."</b><br>";

} else {

print "There was an error with your form submission.";

}

Answer 1

The function containing validEmail( $email ); should be included into you file:

include "whatever.php"

(Or, you could copy and paste the function into the same file as your code)

Your if statement should look something like this:

if( validEmail( $email ) ) {
  // print your success message here
} else {
  // print your fail message here
}

In answer to your comment below, you can also write the above like this:

if( validEmail( $email ) === true ) {
  // print your success message here
} else {
  // print your fail message here
}