Question

I want to validate a form with php.

Therefor I created a class “benutzer” and a public function “benutzerEintragen” of this class to validate the form:

class benutzer
{
private $username = "";
private $mail = "";
private $mail_check = "";
private $passwort = "";
private $passwort_check = "";
public $error_blank = array();
public $error_notSelected = array();
public $error_notEqual = array();

    public function benutzerEintragen () {
    $textfields[0] = $this->username;
    $textfields[1] = $this->mail;
    $textfields[2] = $this->mail_check;
    $textfields[3] = $this->passwort;
    $textfields[4] = $this->passwort_check;
    foreach ($textfields as $string) {
      $result = checkFormular::emptyVariable($string);
      $error_blank[] = $result; 
    }

In the function “benutzerEintragen” i filled the variables “username,mail” and so on with the appropriate $_POST entries (not shown in the code above). The call

checkFormular::emptyVariable($string) 

just returns “TRUE” if the field is not set or empty otherwise FALSE.

Now when i try to create a new instance of this class, execute the function and get access to $error_blank[0] the array is empty!

 if (($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST')){ 
 $BENUTZER = new benutzer();
 $BENUTZER->benutzerEintragen();
 echo $BENUTZER->error_blank[0];}

So the last line is leading to a “Notice: Undefined offset: 0”. It seems to be related to the array structure, because if i do

 echo $BENUTZER->mail;

I get any input I wrote in the form, which is correct. Also the foreach loop seems to do the right thing when i run the debugger in phpEd, but it seems like the array “error_blank” is erased after the function is executed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

There is a scope problem here. You do have a class attribute with the name. Unlike in Java where using a local variable with the same name as a class variable automatically selects the class attribute this is not the case in PHP.

Basically you are saving your output in a local variable which gets discarded once you leave the function. Change $error_blank[] = $result; to $this->error_blank[] = $result; and you should be fine.