PHP CH-02

ADVANCED INTERNET PROGRAMMING
CHAPTER – 02
HTML FORMS DATA HANDLING WITH PHP
Capturing Form Data with PHP
►PHP truly demonstrates its power when handling HTML forms.
►When users hit the button and submit the information entered, it can be collected for
later use.
►PHP form handling performed in two steps:
Creating a client side forms.
Capturing form data submitted
►To access form field values in PHP, use the built-in PHP arrays of superglobal
variables: $_GET and $_POST respectively for GET and POST request methods
►The names of the form fields will be used as indices in the respective arrays.
►For example, to access the value of an input box named ‘first_name’ in a form whose
method is POST, we’d write: $_POST[ ‘first_name’ ];
►If the form method is GET, $_GET[ ‘first_name’ ];
Superglobal Description
$_GET Contains a list of all the field names and values sent by a form using the
get method (i.e. via the URL parameters).
$_POST Contains a list of all the field names and values sent by a form using the
post method (data will not visible in the URL).
$_REQUES Contains the values of both the $_GET and $_POST variables as well as
T the values of the $_COOKIE superglobal variable.
registration_form.php
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Contact Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Registration Form</h2>
<form action="process_form.php" method="post">
First Name:<input type="text" name=“fname">
Last Name: <input type="text" name=“lname">
Email: <input type="text" name="email">
Phone: <input type="text" name=“phone">
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
<input type="reset" value="Reset">
</form>
</body>
</html>
process_form.php
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Contact Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>You Registered Successfully!</h2>
<h2>You Submitted the following data:</h2>
<?php
$fname =$_POST[“fname"];
$lname =$_POST[“lname"]; This assigns the data from a form
$email =$_POST[“email"]; field to a new variable
$phone =$_POST[“phone"];
echo “Your First Name:”. $fname;
echo “Your Last Name:”. $lname; The PHP code blends variables into
echo “Your Email:”. $email; HTML code that’s output to the
echo “Your Phone:”. $phone; ?> browser
</body> </html>
►The form’ s action attribute needs to contain the URL of the PHP script that will handle
the form.
►When a user submit a form through clicking the submit button, the form data is sent to
the "process_form.php" file on the server for processing.
►process_form.php simply captures the information submitted by the user using
superglobal array variables and fields name.
►You can display each field value using echo() statement or keep for later use.
Class Exercise
1. Create login form with username and password fields
2. Capture the form data and determine if the login is successful or failed by providing
hard coded username and password.
Project(20%)
Choose your preferred project title and submit to me within one week.
The project you choose should contain the following features and functionality:
• Form handling (Login, Registration)
• Use database as backend for data storage
• Should perform CRUD(Create, Read, Update and Delete) operation on database
• Role based access to the predefined pages and recourses.
• More features will be posted on the way.
PHP File Uploads
►A PHP script can be used with a HTML form to allow users to upload files to the server.
►Initially files are uploaded into a temporary directory and then relocated to a target
destination by a PHP script
►What you should do first:
 Configure the PHP Settings(php.ini file) – it found at C:\xampp\php\php.in-development
 In php.in file change the following key settings:

1. file_uploads - The value of the file_uploads directive should be set to On to allow file
uploads. The default value of this directive is On (file_uploads = On).
2. upload_max_filesize - allows you to configure the maximum size of the uploaded file. By
default, it's set to 2MB (upload_max_filesize = 20M).
3. post_max_size - allows you to configure the maximum size of POST data. It must be greater
than what you've set for the upload_max_filesize directive. post_max_size = 25M
PHP File Uploads
►The process of file upload has two steps:
1. Creating File Upload Forms –rules to be followed while creating the HTML
form:
 A file select field type should be “file”. <input type=”file” name=”f1” value=”” />
 a form containing a file select field must use the post method
 it must also have an enctype=”multipart/form - data” attribute in its <form> tag.
 E.g < form action=”form_handler.php” method=”post” enctype=”multipart/form-data” >
►The enctype attribute specifies the type of encoding which should be used when the
form is submitted.
PHP File Uploads
►multipart/form-data - it allows you to upload files using the POST method. It ensures
that the form data is encoded as mulitpart MIME data — which is required for
uploading the large quantities of binary data such as image, audio, video, etc.
►You can have as many file select fields as you like within your form, allowing your
users to upload multiple files at once.
►Example: file_upload.html
<html>
<head><title>File Upload </title> </head>
<body>
<h2>File Upload form </h2>
<form action="file_uploader.php" method="post“ enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="file" name="file" size="50" />
<br />
<input type="submit" value="Upload File" />
</form>
</body></html>
PHP File Uploads
2. Accessing Information on Uploaded Files
►In PHP, when a file is uploaded, the $_FILES superglobal variable is populated with all
the information about the uploaded file.
►It’s initialized as an array and may contain the following information for successful file
upload.
 tmp_name - the temporary path where the uploaded file is stored in this variable.
 name - the actual name of the file is stored in this variable.
 size - indicates the size of the uploaded file in bytes.
 type - contains the mime type of the uploaded file.
 error - error or status code associated with the file upload.

PHP File Uploads
►Accessing the uploaded file and its information using $_FILES superglobal array as
follows for the above given file upload form:
 $_FILES['file']['tmp_name’] – returns the uploaded file in the temporary directory on the web
server.
 $_FILES['file']['name'] – returns the actual name of the uploaded file.
 $_FILES['file']['size'] – returns the size in bytes of the uploaded file.
 $_FILES['file']['type'] – returns the MIME type of the uploaded file.
 $_FILES['file']['error'] – returns the error code associated with this file upload.
PHP File Uploads
►Limiting the Size of File Uploads:
Often it’s a good idea to prevent unusually large files being sent to the server.
Apart from consuming bandwidth and hard disk space on the server, a large file can
cause your PHP script to overload the server’s CPU.
PHP allows you to limit the size of uploaded files in a few ways.
First, if you have access to your php.ini file, you can edit a directive called
upload_max_filesize in the file: upload_max_filesize = 32M
if a user tries to upload a file larger than this value (32 megabytes in this example),
the file upload is cancelled and the corresponding error array element is set to
UPLOAD_ERR_INI_SIZE.
PHP File Uploads
 If you don’t have access to your server’s php.ini file, you can add a hidden form field called
MAX_FILE_SIZE at client side program that specifies the maximum allowed size (in bytes)
of an uploaded file.
 This should be placed before the file upload field:
< input type=”hidden” name=”MAX_FILE_SIZE” value=”10000” />
< input type=”file” name=”file” value=”” />
 If the uploaded file is larger than this figure, the upload is cancelled and the corresponding
error array element is set to UPLOAD_ERR_FORM_SIZE
 It’s relatively easy for an attacker to modify Web form and alter the value of the
MAX_FILE_SIZE hidden field (or even remove the field altogether).
 For this reason, it’s best to use upload_max_filesize to limit your file uploads, if possible.
 you can also check the size of an uploaded file manually and reject it if it’s too large:
if ( $_FILES[“photo”][“size”] > 10000 ) die( “File too big!” );
Storing and Using an Uploaded File
►Once a file has been successfully uploaded, it is automatically stored in a temporary
folder on the server.
►To use the file, or store it on a more permanent basis, you need to move it out of the
temporary folder. To do this use move_uploaded_file()
►move_uploaded_file() - moves the uploaded file to a new location.
 It takes two arguments: the path of the file to move, and the path to move it to.
 You can determine the existing path of the file using the tmp_name array element of the
nested array inside the $_FILES array.
 It returns true if the file was moved successfully, or false if there was an error (such as the
path to the file being incorrect).
 Syntax: move_uploaded_file ($from , $to )
if ( move_uploaded_file( $_FILES[“photo”][“tmp_name”], “/home/matt/photos/photo.jpg” ) ) {
echo “Your file was successfully uploaded.”;
} else {
echo “There was a problem uploading your file - please try again.”; }
file_uploader.php
<?php
$target_path = "e:/";
$target_path = $target_path.basename( $_FILES['file']['name']);
if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], $target_path)) {
echo "File uploaded successfully! Your file information are: <br>";
echo “File name is: ”. $_FILES['file']['name’]. “<br>” ;
echo “File size is: ”. $_FILES['file’][size’]. “<br>” ;
echo “File type is: ”. $_FILES['file’][type’]. “<br>” ;
echo “File temporary drirectory is: ”. $_FILES['file'][‘tmp_name’]. “<br>” ;
} else{
echo "Sorry, file not uploaded, please try again!";
?>
Form Validation in PHP
►An HTML form contains various input fields such as text box, checkbox, radio
buttons, submit button, and checklist, etc.
►These input fields need to be validated, which ensures that the user has entered
information in all the required fields and also validates that the information provided by
the user is valid and correct.
►There is no guarantee that the information provided by the user is always correct.
►PHP validates the data at the server-side, which is submitted by HTML form. You need
to validate a few things:
 Empty String
 Validate String
 Validate Numbers
 Validate Email
 Validate URL
 Input length
Empty String
►The code below checks that the field is not empty. If the user leaves the required field empty, it
will show an error message. Put these lines of code to validate the required field.
if (empty ($_POST["name"])) {
echo "Error! You didn't enter the Name.";
} else {
$name = $_POST["name"];
}
Validate String
►The code below checks that the field will contain only alphabets and whitespace, for example -
name. If the name field does not receive valid input from the user, then it will show an error
message:
$name = $_POST ["Name"];
if (!preg_match ("/^[a-zA-z]*$/", $name) ) {
echo "Only alphabets and whitespace are allowed.";
} else { echo $name; }
Validate Number
►The below code validates that the field will only contain a numeric value. For example -
Mobile no. If the Mobile no field does not receive numeric data from the user, the code will
display an error message:
$mobileno = $_POST ["Mobile_no"];
if (!preg_match ("/^[0-9]*$/", $mobileno) ){
echo "Only numeric value is allowed.";
} else { echo $mobileno; }
Validate Email
►A valid email must contain @ and . symbols. PHP provides various methods to validate the
email address. Here, we will use regular expressions to validate the email address.
$email = $_POST ["Email"];
$pattern = "^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$^";
if (!preg_match ($pattern, $email) ){
echo "Email is not valid.";
} else { echo "Your valid email address is: " .$email; }
Input Length Validation
►The input length validation restricts the user to provide the value between the specified range,
for Example - Mobile Number. A valid mobile number must have 10 digits.
$mobileno = $_POST ["Mobile"];
$length = strlen ($mobileno);
if ( $length < 10 && $length > 10) {
echo "Mobile must have 10 digits.";
} else { echo "Your Mobile number is: " .$mobileno; }
Button Click Validate
►The below code validates that the user click on submit button and send the form data to the
server one of the following method - get or post.
if (isset ($_POST['submit']) {
echo "Submit button is clicked.";
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
echo "Data is sent using POST method ";
}
} else { echo "Data is not submitted"; }

PHP CH-02

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

PHP CH-02

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

PHP CH-02

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ADVANCED INTERNET PROGRAMMING

Creating a client side forms.

Capturing form data submitted

 In php.in file change the following key settings:

 it must also have an enctype=”multipart/form - data” attribute in its <form> tag.

 E.g < form action=”form_handler.php” method=”post” enctype=”multipart/form-data” >

 name - the actual name of the file is stored in this variable.

 size - indicates the size of the uploaded file in bytes.

 type - contains the mime type of the uploaded file.

 error - error or status code associated with the file upload.

 $_FILES['file']['name'] – returns the actual name of the uploaded file.

 $_FILES['file']['size'] – returns the size in bytes of the uploaded file.

 $_FILES['file']['type'] – returns the MIME type of the uploaded file.

$target_path = $target_path.basename( $_FILES['file']['name']);

echo "File uploaded successfully! Your file information are: <br>";

echo “File name is: ”. $_FILES['file']['name’]. “<br>” ;

echo “File size is: ”. $_FILES['file’][size’]. “<br>” ;

echo “File type is: ”. $_FILES['file’][type’]. “<br>” ;

echo “File temporary drirectory is: ”. $_FILES['file'][‘tmp_name’]. “<br>” ;

echo "Sorry, file not uploaded, please try again!";

You might also like