Question

I have a function that lets you update your information, like email and username. The email field has a validation is_unique[table.email]. When lets say the user doesn’t want to change the email, but just the country or other info, the is_unique is going to display the message. But if I remove it in update page, the user might put an email address that is already in database.

What would be best logical method of solving this issue?

Answer 1

Assuming you are using a database query and counting the number of rows it returns (0 meaning that the address is free), you’ll want to pass the user’s unique ID along:

$result = $this->db->where('email_address',$email)->where('id !=',$userid)->get('users')->num_rows();

What I just did above will check if anyone other than our current user is signed up with the requested email. If this user wants to just update his/her country, it won’t trigger an error.

edit: This would be in your custom form validation rule __unique_email() or something similar. Which needs to be in the controller.