Contact Form Validating Email & Non-Latin Characters

Question

I am having problems making a website with a contact form. First of all, any email address entered it spews out as invalid. Also, I have a expectancy for the name, and I'm not sure how to add special characters (Eg. É) and spaces for the last name.

Here is the existing PHP:

$error_message = "";
$email_exp = "/^[A-Za-z0-9._%-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z];{2,4}$/";

if (!preg_match($email_exp, $email)) {
    $error_message .= '<b> The Email Address you entered does not appear to be valid. </b> <br/>';
}

$string_exp = "/^[A-Za-z.'-]+$/";   
if (!preg_match($string_exp, $name)) {
    $error_message .= '<b> The Name you entered does not appear to be valid. </b> <br/>';
}

if(strlen($subject) < 3){
    $error_message .= '<b> The Subject you entered does not appear to be valid. </b> <br/>';    
}

if(strlen($message) < 2){
    $error_message .= '<b> The Message you entered does not appear to be valid. </b> <br/>';    
}

Updated PHP for @J. Robertson:

<?php

if (isset($_POST['email'])){

// email info
$email_to ="[email protected]";
$email_subject = $_POST['subject'];
$email_from = $_POST['email'];

//error code

function died($error) {
    echo "I am sorry, but there seems to be error(s) found within the form you submitted. <br/>";
    echo "The error(s) will appear below: <br/> <br/>";
    echo $error. "<br/><br/>";
    echo "Please go back and fix these error(s). <br/>";
    die();
    }

//validation

    if(!isset($_POST['name']) ||
    !isset($_POST['email']) ||
    !isset($_POST['subject']) || 
    !isset($_POST['message'])) {
        died('I am sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the form you submitted.');
        }

    $name = $_POST['name'];
    $email = $_POST['email'];
    $subject = $_POST['subject'];
    $message = $_POST['message'];

//expected strings

$error_message = "";
$email_exp = '/[^\s]*@[a-z0-9.-]*/i';

if (!preg_match($email_exp, $email)) {
    $error_message .= '<b> The Email Address you entered does not appear to be valid. </b> <br/>';
    }

$string_exp = "/^[A-Za-z.'-]+$/";   
if (!preg_match($string_exp, $name)) {
    $error_message .= '<b> The Name you entered does not appear to be valid. </b> <br/>';
    }
    if(strlen($subject) < 3){
    $error_message .= '<b> The Subject you entered does not appear to be valid. </b> <br/>';    
    }

if(strlen($message) < 2){
    $error_message .= '<b> The Message you entered does not appear to be valid. </b> <br/>';    
    }

if(strlen($error_message) > 0 ){
    died($error_message);
    }
    $email_message = "Form Details below.\n\n";

//sanitization
function clean_string($string){ 
    $bad = array("content-type", "bcc:", "to:", "cc:", "href");
    return str_replace($bad, "", $string);
    }

$email_message .= "Name:" . clean_string($name) . "\n";
$email_message .= "E-Mail:" . clean_string($email) . "\n";
$email_message .= "Subject:" . clean_string($subject) . "\n";
$email_message .= "Message:" . clean_string($message) . "\n";

//email headers
$headers = 'From: ' .$email_From . '\r\n'. 'Reply-To' .
    $email. "\r\n" .
    'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
    @mail($email_to, $email_subject, $email_message, $headers);

} ?>

Use filter_var() for validating emails: filter_var('[email protected]', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) — John Conde
filter_var makes problems if the email contains non latin characters — Didatus

JRizz JRizz · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-06T18:36:58

I suspect the problem lies with your reg ex. Using http://gskinner.com/RegExr/ to test it against [email protected], your reg ex does not pick up even that basic email address.

It's highly unlikely you'll come up with a regex that covers all email possibilities- it may be more worthwhile to simply check for an '@' sign, and then send a test email to the server to see if it's valid.

Otherwise, if you'd like a valid regex to test against, try

/[^\s]*@[a-z0-9.-]*/i

Contact Form Validating Email & Non-Latin Characters

1 Answers