Easiest Form Validation Library For PHP

Easiest Form validation library for PHP?

I wrote a simple class of my own, combining some regexes i collected over the years with PHP's sanatize and filter functions.

<?
/**
 * Pork Formvalidator. validates fields by regexes and can sanatize them. Uses PHP filter_var built-in functions and extra regexes 
 * @package pork
 */


/**
 * Pork.FormValidator
 * Validates arrays or properties by setting up simple arrays
 * 
 * @package pork
 * @author SchizoDuckie
 * @copyright SchizoDuckie 2009
 * @version 1.0
 * @access public
 */
class FormValidator
{
    public static $regexes = Array(
            'date' => "^[0-9]{4}[-/][0-9]{1,2}[-/][0-9]{1,2}\$",
            'amount' => "^[-]?[0-9]+\$",
            'number' => "^[-]?[0-9,]+\$",
            'alfanum' => "^[0-9a-zA-Z ,.-_\\s\?\!]+\$",
            'not_empty' => "[a-z0-9A-Z]+",
            'words' => "^[A-Za-z]+[A-Za-z \\s]*\$",
            'phone' => "^[0-9]{10,11}\$",
            'zipcode' => "^[1-9][0-9]{3}[a-zA-Z]{2}\$",
            'plate' => "^([0-9a-zA-Z]{2}[-]){2}[0-9a-zA-Z]{2}\$",
            'price' => "^[0-9.,]*(([.,][-])|([.,][0-9]{2}))?\$",
            '2digitopt' => "^\d+(\,\d{2})?\$",
            '2digitforce' => "^\d+\,\d\d\$",
            'anything' => "^[\d\D]{1,}\$"
    );
    private $validations, $sanatations, $mandatories, $errors, $corrects, $fields;


    public function __construct($validations=array(), $mandatories = array(), $sanatations = array())
    {
        $this->validations = $validations;
        $this->sanatations = $sanatations;
        $this->mandatories = $mandatories;
        $this->errors = array();
        $this->corrects = array();
    }

    /**
     * Validates an array of items (if needed) and returns true or false
     *
     */
    public function validate($items)
    {
        $this->fields = $items;
        $havefailures = false;
        foreach($items as $key=>$val)
        {
            if((strlen($val) == 0 || array_search($key, $this->validations) === false) && array_search($key, $this->mandatories) === false) 
            {
                $this->corrects[] = $key;
                continue;
            }
            $result = self::validateItem($val, $this->validations[$key]);
            if($result === false) {
                $havefailures = true;
                $this->addError($key, $this->validations[$key]);
            }
            else
            {
                $this->corrects[] = $key;
            }
        }

        return(!$havefailures);
    }

    /**
     *
     *  Adds unvalidated class to thos elements that are not validated. Removes them from classes that are.
     */
    public function getScript() {
        if(!empty($this->errors))
        {
            $errors = array();
            foreach($this->errors as $key=>$val) { $errors[] = "'INPUT[name={$key}]'"; }

            $output = '$$('.implode(',', $errors).').addClass("unvalidated");'; 
            $output .= "alert('there are errors in the form');"; // or your nice validation here
        }
        if(!empty($this->corrects))
        {
            $corrects = array();
            foreach($this->corrects as $key) { $corrects[] = "'INPUT[name={$key}]'"; }
            $output .= '$$('.implode(',', $corrects).').removeClass("unvalidated");';   
        }
        $output = "<script type='text/javascript'>{$output} </script>";
        return($output);
    }


    /**
     *
     * Sanatizes an array of items according to the $this->sanatations
     * sanatations will be standard of type string, but can also be specified.
     * For ease of use, this syntax is accepted:
     * $sanatations = array('fieldname', 'otherfieldname'=>'float');
     */
    public function sanatize($items)
    {
        foreach($items as $key=>$val)
        {
            if(array_search($key, $this->sanatations) === false && !array_key_exists($key, $this->sanatations)) continue;
            $items[$key] = self::sanatizeItem($val, $this->validations[$key]);
        }
        return($items);
    }


    /**
     *
     * Adds an error to the errors array.
     */ 
    private function addError($field, $type='string')
    {
        $this->errors[$field] = $type;
    }

    /**
     *
     * Sanatize a single var according to $type.
     * Allows for static calling to allow simple sanatization
     */
    public static function sanatizeItem($var, $type)
    {
        $flags = NULL;
        switch($type)
        {
            case 'url':
                $filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_URL;
            break;
            case 'int':
                $filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT;
            break;
            case 'float':
                $filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_FLOAT;
                $flags = FILTER_FLAG_ALLOW_FRACTION | FILTER_FLAG_ALLOW_THOUSAND;
            break;
            case 'email':
                $var = substr($var, 0, 254);
                $filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL;
            break;
            case 'string':
            default:
                $filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING;
                $flags = FILTER_FLAG_NO_ENCODE_QUOTES;
            break;

        }
        $output = filter_var($var, $filter, $flags);        
        return($output);
    }

    /** 
     *
     * Validates a single var according to $type.
     * Allows for static calling to allow simple validation.
     *
     */
    public static function validateItem($var, $type)
    {
        if(array_key_exists($type, self::$regexes))
        {
            $returnval =  filter_var($var, FILTER_VALIDATE_REGEXP, array("options"=> array("regexp"=>'!'.self::$regexes[$type].'!i'))) !== false;
            return($returnval);
        }
        $filter = false;
        switch($type)
        {
            case 'email':
                $var = substr($var, 0, 254);
                $filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL;    
            break;
            case 'int':
                $filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_INT;
            break;
            case 'boolean':
                $filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN;
            break;
            case 'ip':
                $filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_IP;
            break;
            case 'url':
                $filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_URL;
            break;
        }
        return ($filter === false) ? false : filter_var($var, $filter) !== false ? true : false;
    }       



}

Now this requires mootools for some of the javascript you see here, but you can easily change that to your favorite javascript framework. All it does is look up the element, and add the 'unvalidated' CSS class to it.

Usage is as simple as i always ever wanted:

Example:

$validations = array(
    'name' => 'anything',
    'email' => 'email',
    'alias' => 'anything',
    'pwd'=>'anything',
    'gsm' => 'phone',
    'birthdate' => 'date');
$required = array('name', 'email', 'alias', 'pwd');
$sanatize = array('alias');

$validator = new FormValidator($validations, $required, $sanatize);

if($validator->validate($_POST))
{
    $_POST = $validator->sanatize($_POST);
    // now do your saving, $_POST has been sanatized.
    die($validator->getScript()."<script type='text/javascript'>alert('saved changes');</script>");
}
else
{
    die($validator->getScript());
}

To validate just one element:

$validated = new FormValidator()->validate('blah@bla.', 'email');

To sanatize just one element:

$sanatized = new FormValidator()->sanatize('<b>blah</b>', 'string');

The coolest thing about this class is that you can send your form with an ajax or iframe target and execute the resulting script. No need to refresh the page or re-send the same form data back to the browser :) Also, if the script needs changing, there's no difficult overdesigned framework to analyze, just change it any way you want :)

Oh yeah, feel free to use this anywhere you want. No licenses

good PHP validation libraries

You could give a go to Zend_Validate

http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.validate.introduction.html

With the Zend framework, you can choose to use whichever part of the framework you like. If you go for very basic validation, it can be as simple as static calls to predefined methods such as:

if (Zend_Validate::is($email, 'EmailAddress')) {
    // Yes, email appears to be valid
}

Otherwise you also have the option of building custom validators of your own design.

Where is the good php validation library like jquery validation

Here are a couple of php validation classes:

http://codecanyon.net/item/easyvalidation-php-special-validation-class/521960

http://taggedzi.com/articles/display/validation-class-for-php

http://www.phpclasses.org/package/7120-PHP-Validate-input-values-according-to-many-rules.html

http://www.jasonashdown.co.uk/2008/08/php-validation-class-for-forms/

This one compliments JQuery.

http://code.google.com/p/jquery-validation-php-plugin/

A PHP and jQuery form creation and validation library available?

You can use ValidForm Builder. It matches perfect to your requirements:
With it you can define Forms with validation rules in PHP, and it generates the Forms with jQuery and client side validation.

Feature List (taken from their site):

• The API generates XHTML Strict 1.0 compliant code.
• Field validation on the client side to minimize traffic overhead.
• Field validation on the server side to enforce validation rules and prevent tempering
  with the form through SQL injection.
• Client side validation displays inline to improve user satisfaction. No more annoying popups that don't really tell you anything.
• Easy creation of complex form structures.
• Uses the popular jQuery Javascript library for DOM manipulation.
• Completely customizable using CSS.
• Automatic creation of field summaries for form mailers in both HTML and plain text.
• It's open source and therefore completely free (here's the GitHub repo)!

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