2-Chapter Edit-1

Chapter : Two
PHP Form Handling

• What is form in HTML/PHP?
• How can you write the syntax of form ?
• Did you remembered some attributes of forms ?
• Differentiate the attributes of form?
• What are the value of attributes in form ?
• What is validation ? Can you mention some common validation types?

What is Form in PHP
• One of the most powerful features of PHP is the way it handles HTML forms.
• Form used to gather input from users or used to pass data to a server.
• The <form> element defines a form that is used to collect user input:
• A form is the way information is gotten from a browser to a server.
The syntax:
<form action=“url to submit the form filled” method=“get” or “post”>
<!–- form contents -->
</form>
<Form> Attributes
 name
 method
 action
 enctype
 name=“name” Value of attributes
 method=“get, post”
 action=“url” {url of the server-side script to post data to}
 enctype=“enctype” -specifies how the form-data should be encoded when submitting it to the
server {application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data, text/plain, … }
multipart/form-data – used when uploading files, does not encode any character. text/plain-
convert spaces into + symbols but special characters are not converted.
 The enctype attribute Can be used only method=“POST”.
 Eg.<form name=“student” method=“post” action=“search.php” enctype=“text/plain” >

….
</form>
• Name – the name of the form Value of attributes
• <form name student action="welcome.php" method="post">
• Action – the URL of the script that the data will be sent to – this is the page that will display
once the submit button is clicked
• <form name student action="welcome.php" method="post">
• When a user click on the submit button, the form data is sent to a PHP file, called
"welcome.php":
• Method – Indicates how the information in the form will be sent to the web
server when the form is submitted.

• Two possible values:
The GET Method:- Value of attributes

• Has restriction to send to server/ database parts upto 1024 characters only.
• Can't be used to send binary data, like images or word documents, to the server because the
GET method sends the encoded user information.
• The data sent by GET can be accessed using QUERY_STRING environment variable.
• Never use GET method for systems which have password or other sensitive information.
• The information sent from a form with the GET method is visible to everyone (it will be
displayed in the browser's address bar). it is possible to bookmark the page.
• For example http://localhost/xy.php?name=bekele$age=39

• The POST Method Value of attributes
• The POST method does not have any restriction on data size to be sent.
• Relatively secured and could large data in requesting and responding data
• The POST method can be used to send ASCII as well as binary data.
• The data sent by POST method goes through HTTP header is secured enough on HTTP
protocol.
• Variables sent with HTTP POST are not visible in the URL. , it is not possible to bookmark
the page
• The Information sent from a form with the POST method is invisible to others
• For example http://localhost/xy.php

FORM Tag Elements
 Several tags are used in connection with forms:

 <form>
 <input>
 <select> …… </select>
 <option> ……</option>
 <textarea> …… </textarea>
 <fieldset>……. </fieldset>
 <legend>…… </legend>
 </form>
 All objects must be inside of a form tag.

Elements of <Form>
• Form elements are different types of input elements, like text fields,
checkboxes, radio buttons, submit buttons, and more. Those objects are
called widgets(e.g., radio buttons and checkboxes).
• All of the widgets, or components of a form are defined in the content of

a <form> tag.
• <input type="text“, “password“, “radio”, “image”, "checkbox“, “File”,

”Button”, "submit“, "reset" > and <select>, <textarea>, <fieldset>
Save as Form.html
Elements of <Form>
<html> Save as welcome.php
<body>
<form action="welcome.php" method="post">
Name: <input type="text" name="name"><br>
E-mail: <input type="text" name="email"><br>
<input type="submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
Cont.…
• The $_REQUEST variable
• The PHP $_REQUEST variable contains the contents of $_GET, $_POST, and
$_COOKIE variables.
• This variable can be used to get the result from form data sent with both the GET
and POST methods.
•$username=$_REQUEST['username'];
•$password=$_REQUEST['password'];
Cont.…
• The PHP header () function supplies raw HTTP headers to the browser and
can be used to redirect it to another location.
• The redirection script should be at the very top of the page to prevent any
other part of the page from loading.
• The target is specified by the Location: header as the argument to the header
() function. header("location:homepage.php").
• After calling this function the exit () function can be used to halt parsing of
rest of the code.
The $_REQUEST variable
PHP Form Validation
• User input should be validated whenever possible.
• You can validate the form input on two places,
• Client side (done with javascript) ,required = “ required“,maxlength=“5”

• Server side (done with PHP) , if(!preg_match("/^[A-Z,a-z]+$/", $name))
• Client side validation is faster, and will reduce server load.
• For security reason, use server side validation if the form accesses a database.
• Server side form validation with PHP can act as a backup just in case the user
switch off java script support on the browser.
Cont..
• Form validation must be carried out on every form element to guarantee
that the input is correct and processing incorrect input values can make
your application give unpredictable result.
• A good way to validate a form on the server is to post the form to itself
<?php $_PHP_SELF ?>, instead of jumping (welcome.php) to a
different page. The user will then get the error messages on the same
page as the form.
• This makes it easier to discover the error.

Common Validations
 We can categorize validation in to the following groups:

Presence Validation
String Length Validation
Type Validation
Inclusion in set Validation
Uniqueness Validation
Format Validation
The preg_match() function will tell you whether a string contains matches of a
pattern.
Cont..
• Presence Validation: check if there is something in a field or if a variable is not empty.
Cont..
• String Length Validation: is used to check if a value is within a certain range.
• $password=”itec1234”;
• $min=6;
• $max=10;
• if(strlen($password)<$min&&strlen($password)>$max)
• die("Password doesnot fulfill the requirement");

Cont..
Cont..
• Type Validation: is checking whether the given value is number, string or of another type.
Cont..
• Type Validation: is checking whether the given value is number, string or of another
type.
• Write a php program that can accept students age only 2 digits ?
Cont..
• Write a php program that can accept phone number which is started by +251 ?
Cont..
• Inclusion in set Validation: Is used to validate whether the value is in the set
• Write a php program that can accept students’ sex with letters m or f ?
Cont..
• Uniqueness Validation: Is used to validate whether the value which is going to be submitted to a
Cont..
• Format Validation: Is used to validate whether the value has the right format e.g.
email with @ symbol, currency with $ symbol, DateTime with AM or PM
• It uses regular expression on the string Syntax: preg_match($regexp,$subject)
• if(!preg_match("/^[@]+$/", $Email)){
• echo "You enterd invaid input";
• }else
• {echo "Your Email is".$Email;
•}
Cont..
• Validate e-mail address: Used to check an email is valid, i.e to have valid forms. if
(!filter_var($value, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL))
• die("Invalid email format");
• Or
• if(!preg_match("/([\w\-]+\@[\w\-]+\.[\w\-]+)/",$value))
• die("Invalid email format");
• URL Address: If there is an input field named "website" we can check for a valid
URL address like this
• if (!preg_match("/\b(?:(?:https?|ftp):\/\/|www\.)[-a-z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-a-z0-
9+&@#\/%=~_|]/i",$value)) {
• die("Invalid URL");
Refer the following PHP Built-in Functions
• Trim()
• Empty()
• Preg_match()
• Preg_replace()
• html_entities()
• Htmlspecialcharacters()
• Add_slashes()
• Strip_slashes()
• Mail()
Thank You!!!

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Chapter : Two

PHP Form Handling

• How can you write the syntax of form ?

• Did you remembered some attributes of forms ?

• Differentiate the attributes of form?

• What are the value of attributes in form ?

• What is validation ? Can you mention some common validation types?

• A form is the way information is gotten from a browser to a server.

 action=“url” {url of the server-side script to post data to}

 The enctype attribute Can be used only method=“POST”.

 Eg.<form name=“student” method=“post” action=“search.php” enctype=“text/plain” >

• <form name student action="welcome.php" method="post">

server when the form is submitted.

The GET Method:- Value of attributes

• For example http://localhost/xy.php?name=bekele$age=39

• For example http://localhost/xy.php

 Several tags are used in connection with forms:

 All objects must be inside of a form tag.

• All of the widgets, or components of a form are defined in the content of

• <input type="text“, “password“, “radio”, “image”, "checkbox“, “File”,

• You can validate the form input on two places,

• Client side (done with javascript) ,required = “ required“,maxlength=“5”

• Client side validation is faster, and will reduce server load.

• This makes it easier to discover the error.

 We can categorize validation in to the following groups:

• String Length Validation: is used to check if a value is within a certain range.

• die("Password doesnot fulfill the requirement");

• It uses regular expression on the string Syntax: preg_match($regexp,$subject)

• echo "You enterd invaid input";

• {echo "Your Email is".$Email;

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