Question

I’ve a form,in the form only few fields are mandatory.When a fields is not mandatory,it should not check for empty data validation.If the non mandatory field contain data then it shoudl check the data,validation should happen only when data present.

My below code check for all fields.For eg:Say phone is not mandatory in below code,how to change the code.

$validate = array(
    array($x, '/^[a-z\d ]{4,20}$/i', "Please enter valid name."),
    array($y, '/^[a-z\d ]{4,20}$/i', "Please enter a real category."),
    array($phone, '/^\(?[0-9]{3}\)?|[0-9]{3}[-. ]? [0-9]{3}[-. ]?[0-9]{4}$/' , "Please enter a valid phone number")
);

$error = '';
foreach ($validate as $validation)
{
    if (!preg_match($validation[1],$validation[0]))
    {
       $error .= $validation[2]; 
    }
}

if($error != '')
{
    echo $error;
    exit;
}

Comment on this post,if it is not clear.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

If you want to check if at least required fields have been submitted, you can check whether they have been set and have a truthy value using the isset and empty functions.

For example:

if ( isset($_POST['username'], $_POST['password']) && 
     ! empty($_POST['username']) && ! empty($_POST['password']) ) {
    // validation here
}

That would check if the username and password fields were submitted and have a value, whereas for example an email field wouldn’t necessarily have been filled in for the above condition to return true.