Question

if(empty($_POST['name'])){
header("location:users_adduser.php?fail=1"); //no name specified
}

If I echo $_POST[‘name’] I can see that it is in fact empty. So what gives? How should I be checking for empty input fields?

Answer 1

According to the documentation, an empty string should be considered…well, empty. I’d try using var_dump() on $_POST and see what comes back, maybe it’s not empty after all.

var_dump($_POST);

For testing purposes, comment out the header() call for now and perhaps just issue a print statement to ensure that it is actually evaluating to true. It could be a header redirect issue rather than a problem with empty().

if(empty($_POST['name'])){
  // header("location:users_adduser.php?fail=1"); //no name specified
  print("POST['name'] IS empty!");
}