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Web Technologies and Programming

Lecture 14

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Validating User Input

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Today’s Lecture Outline
• Regular expressions in PHP
• Validating user input at server
• String functions

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1. Regular expressions in PHP
• Regular expressions are sequence or pattern of
characters itself. They provide the foundation
for pattern-matching functionality
• A regular expression is a concise notation to
describe patterns in strings
• Regular expressions provide the foundation
for describing or matching data according to
defined syntax rules
– Example: |^[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}$|
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 1. Regular expressions in PHP
• Using regular expression you can search a
particular string inside a another string, you can
replace one string by another string and you can
split a string into many chunks.
• PHP offers functions specific to two sets of
regular expression functions, each corresponding
to a certain type of regular expression. You can
use any of them based on your comfort.
• POSIX Regular Expressions
• PERL Style Regular Expressions
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1. Regular expressions in PHP…
Sub pattern with fixed character

Start and end of RE

|^[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}$|
Sub pattern Sub pattern Sub pattern

Start matching
Match the end of
from the start [0-9] {2} the string

Allowed length
characters

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 1. Regular expressions in PHP…
• Brackets
• Brackets ([]) have a special meaning when used
in the context of regular expressions. They are
used to find a range of characters.
• [0-9] It matches any decimal digit from 0 through 9.
• Brackets: [a-Z], [A-Z], [a-z], [0-9]

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 1. Regular expressions in PHP…
• Quantifiers
• The frequency or position of bracketed
character sequences and single characters can
be denoted by a special character.
• Each special character having a specific
connotation. The +, *, ?, {int. range}, and $ flags
all follow a character sequence

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 1. Regular expressions in PHP…
• p+ : It matches any string containing at least one p.
• p* : It matches any string containing zero or more p's.
• p? : It matches any string containing zero or more p's. This is just
an alternative way to use p*.
• p{N}: It matches any string containing a sequence of N p's
• p{2,3}: It matches any string containing a sequence of two or
three p's.
• p{2, }: It matches any string containing a sequence of at least two
p's.
• p$: It matches any string with p at the end of it.
• ^p : It matches any string with p at the beginning of it.

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1. Regular expressions in PHP…
• Start and end of the RE:
– optional, ||
• Sub-patterns:
– range of allowed characters
• [0-9]
– Allowed length
• {2}
• Sub-patterns with fixed character

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1. Regular expressions in PHP…
• Matching from the start: ^:
– 1212-12-2014
Pattern exists if do not
match from start

• Matching till end: $:

– 12-12-2014123
Pattern exists if do
not match till end
• For exact match we should use both ^ and $

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 1.1 Notations for RE
• ^:
– Match strings that start with the given pattern
• $:
– Match strings that end with the given pattern
• -:
– Range of characters
• [ ]:
– Makes a class of characters
• [^ ]:
– Negates the class of character
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 1.1 Notation for RE…
• Quantifiers:
– {n}:
• matches a character, class or sub-pattern for n
times
– {n, m}:
• matches a character, class or sub-pattern for
minimum n times and maximum m times

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 1.1 Notation for RE…
• ?:
– matches the character, class or sub-pattern 0 or 1 time
• equal to {0,1}
• +:
– matches the character, class or sub-pattern 1 or more
times
• equals to {1, }
• *:
– matches the character, class or sub-pattern 0 or any
number of time
• equals {0, }

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 1.1 Notation for RE…
Predefined character ranges:
• \d:
– Exactly as [0-9]
• \D:
– Exactly as [^0-9]
• \w:
– Exactly as [a-zA-Z0-9]

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 1.1 Notation for RE…
RE examples:
– Validating date:
• |^\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4}$|
– Validating CNIC:
• |^\d{5}-\d{7}-\d{1}$|
– Validating Email:
• |^[a-zA-Z0-9_.]+@[a-z]{3,5}.[a-z]{2,3}$|

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1.1 Notation for RE…
– Validating name:
• |^[a-zA-Z ]{5,25}$|
– Validating Password:
• must contain ‘@’
– |@|

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 2. Validating User’s Input
• preg_match():
– searches a string for a specific pattern
– returns TRUE if it exists
– retruns FALSE otherwise
– preg_match(“pattern”,$string);

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 2. Validating User’s Input
• preg_match_all():
• The preg_match_all() function matches all
occurrences of pattern in string.

• preg_grep():
• The preg_grep() function searches all elements
of input_array, returning all elements matching
the regexp pattern.

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2. Validating User’s Input…

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2. Validating User’s Input…

Post To UserValidation.php

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2. Validating User’s Input

Receiving Values

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2. Validating User’s Input

Validating Name

Validating Email Address

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2. Validating User’s Input

Validating CNIC

Validating DoB

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2. Validating User’s Input

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 3. String Functions in PHP
• strlen():
– Returns the length of the string
– strlen($string);
• strcmp():
– Compares two strings
– Returns 0 if strings are equal
– 1 if first string is greater than second string
– -1 if second string is greater than first string
– strcmp($string1, $string2);
• strcasecmp():
– Compares two strings in case insensitive manner
– strcasecmp($string1, $string2);
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3. String Functions in PHP…

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3. String Functions in PHP…

Post to ValidatePass.php

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3. String Functions in PHP…

Getting Variables

Using strlen()

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3. String Functions in PHP…

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3. String Functions in PHP…

Compares Pass and cPass

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3. String Functions in PHP…

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 3. String Functions in PHP…
• strtolower():
– Convert a string in lower case
– strtolower($string);
• strtoupper():
– Convert a string in upper case
– strtoupper($string);
• ucfirst():
– Convert the first character of a string to upper case
– ucfirst($string);
• ucwords():
– Convert the first character of each word in a string to upper case
– ucfirst($string);
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3. String functions in PHP…

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3. String functions in PHP…

Converts to Lowercase

Converts to Uppercase

Using ucfirst()

Using ucwords()

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3. String functions in PHP…

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 3. String Functions in PHP…
• strpos():
– finds the position of the first case-sensitive occurrence of a
substring in a string
– strpos($string,sub-string);
• strrpos():
– finds the position of the last case-sensitive occurrence of a
substring in a string
– strrpos($string,sub-string);
• substr_count():
– returns the number of times one string occurs within
another
– substr_count($string,sub-string);
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3. String functions in PHP…
First Occurrence of ‘E’

Last Occurrence of ‘E’

All Occurrences of ‘E’

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3. String functions in PHP…

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 Summary of PHP Lectures
• Setting the environment
• PHP overview
– What is a PHP File
– Open-source
– Platform independent
– What Can PHP Do?
– Why PHP?
– Basic PHP Syntax
– Writing and Executing PHP Code
• PHP constants
– Constants are Global
• PHP variables
– Local
– Global
– Static
– Type Determination
• PHP Strings
• PHP is a Loosely Typed Language 41
 Summary of PHP Lectures
• Operators in PHP
• Arithmetic Operators: +, - ,*, /, %, **
• Assignment Operators: =
• String Operators: . , .=
• Increment/decrement Operators: ++ , --
• Logical Operators: AND, OR, NOT, XOR, &&, ||, !
• Comparison Operators: >, <, <=, >=
• Equality Operators: ==, !=, ===

• Conditional statements
• if statement - executes some code if one condition is true
• if...else statement - executes some code if a condition is true and another code if
that condition is false
• if...elseif....else statement - executes different codes for more than two conditions
• switch statement - selects one of many blocks of code to be executed
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Summary of PHP Lectures
• Looping statements
• For Loop
• While Loop
• Do-While Loop
• ForEach Loop
• Arrays in PHP
• Associative arrays
• Sorting arrays

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Summary of PHP Lectures
• Passing Form Data
– action
– method (POST or GET)
• When to Use GET?
• When to Use POST?
• Compare GET vs. POST
• Super Global Variables

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Summary of PHP Lectures
• Passing data with forms
– Passing Text Field Data
– Passing Hidden Field Data
– Getting Value From Checkbox
– Getting Value From Radio Button
– Getting Value From Select List
• Using session Variables

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 Summary of Today’s Lecture
• Writing regular expression in PHP
• Brackets []
• Quantifiers +, *, ?, {int. range}, and $
• Sub-patterns
• Predefined character ranges\d:\D:\w:

• Validating User’s Input

• Validating name:
• Validating Password:
• Validating date:
• Validating CNIC:
• Validating Email:
• Validating user’s input

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Summary of Today’s Lecture
• Defined functions.
• preg_match():
• preg_match_all():
• preg_grep():

• String Functions in PHP

• strlen():
• strcmp():
• strcasecmp():
• strtolower():
• strtoupper():
• ucfirst():
• ucwords():
• strpos():
• strrpos():
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• substr_count():
THANK YOU

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