Question

What would be best practice in check for set get/post/request?

right now i am doing

if(!isset($_GET['account']) || !isset($_GET['ssid']) || !isset($_GET['mssid']) || !isset($_GET['max'])) { die("missing info"); }
if($_GET['account'] == "" || $_GET['ssid'] == "" || $_GET['mssid'] == "" || $_GET['max'] == "") { die("missing info"); }

I assume this is horrendous and very bad to do… can’t seem to figure out the ‘accepted’ way to do this

Answer 1

Well one way is to create a function that accepts an array, and a superglobal to check against, for completeness:

function arrayIsset(Array $keys, $array){
    $notSet = array();
    foreach($keys as $key){
        if(!isset($array[$key] || empty($array[$key]){
            $notSet[] = $key;
        }
    }
    return empty($notSet)
        ? true
        : $notSet;
}

$valid = arrayIsset(array('account', 'ssid', 'mssid'), $_GET);

If the values are all set and non-empty, it returns true, otherwise it returns an array of keys for missing values.

---

Based on your comments to Felix Kling; In addition to verifying whether a value is set/empty, you’ll want to perform more robust validation techniques. There’s a plethora available, both core (filters) and third party.

---

Though this doesn’t cover Filters, string based validation is easy with Regex:

function validateArray(Array $validators, Array $array){

    foreach($validators as $key => $regex){

        if(!isset($array[$key])
        || empty($array[$key])
        || !preg_match($regex, $array[$key])){

            //failed

        }

    }

}

$isValid = validateArray(array(
    // alphanumeric, must start with alpha
    'username'       => '#^ [a-z] [a-z0-9]* $#Dix',
    // numeric 3 digits, space, 6 digits
    'account_number' => '#^ [0-9]{3} \s [0-9]{6} $#Dix',
), $_GET);

You can get really fancy with complicated regular expressions, but the aforementioned filters may be a better solution, depending on the level of complexity you wish to achieve.