Testing form with PHP

[Tigers!]

Gudday all
I have finally got my JS validation of a form working but PHP validation is causing me so much grief.
Here is my bog standard form

<h2>Ordering a catalogue</h2>
<div style="font-size:11px;">The items marked with a * are essential.</div><br />
<form method="post" name="catalogue" action="cataloguetest-7.php";">
<!--<label></label>-->
<table class="table1" border="0">
<tr><td>Media type*:</td>
<td>
<input type="radio" id="booklet" name="media" value="booklet">Booklet
<input type="radio" id="CD" name="media" value="CD/DVD">CD/DVD</td>
</tr>
<tr><td style="width:90px;"><label>Name*:</label></td><td><input name="name" id="name" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><td><label>Address*:</label></td><td><input name="address" id="address" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><td><label>Ciy/Town*:</label></td><td><input name="city" id="city" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><td><label>State*:</label></td><td><input name="state" id="state" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><td><label>Post Code*:</label></td><td><input name="postcode" id="postcode" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><td><label>Country*:</label></td>
<td>
<select name="country" id="country" size="1">
< .. Country drop down list here ..>
 </select></td></tr>
<tr><td><label>E-mail*:</label></td><td><input name="email" id="email" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><td><label>Telephone:</label></td><td><input name="phone" id="phone" type="text" /></td></tr>
</tr>
</table>
 <br />
 <input name="catalogue" id="catalogue" type="submit" value="Request catalogue">
</form>

What I would like the php to do is to test the following
1. Form submitted with no data at all - re-display form and give submitter message to that effect.
2. Check each field for data - re-display form and give submitter message to that effect.
3. If e-mail address invalid - re-display form and give submitter message to that effect.
No. 2 should be the easiest but even that has me stumped.
The code below (cataloguetest-7.php) just checks for the submitter's name, address and city but all that is displayed when I press submit is the php code itself.

<?php

   //Form has some data entered
   //Init error variables
   $errorName  = false;
   $errorAddress = false;
   $errorCity  = false;
   $errorState  = false;
   $errorPostcode  = false;
   $errorEmail = false; 
   
   $name  = isset($_POST['name'])  ? trim($_POST['name'])  : '';  
   $address  = isset($_POST['address'])  ? trim($_POST['address'])  : '';
   $city  = isset($_POST['city'])  ? trim($_POST['city'])  : ''; 
   $state  = isset($_POST['state'])  ? trim($_POST['state'])  : '';
   $postcode  = isset($_POST['postcode'])  ? trim($_POST['postcode'])  : '';   
   $email = isset($_POST['email']) ? trim($_POST['email']) : '';   
   
   // Display the form again as there was an error   
   if ($errorName || $errorAddress || $errorCity) 
    {     
      header('location: cataloguerequestK.htm');    
      //showForm($errorName,$errorEmail,$errorMesg);
    } 
    else 
    {
      $sendto = "xyz@abc.com.au"; 
      $subject = "Petals & Patches catalogue request"; 
      $message = <<<TEXT
I would a copy of the Petals & Patches catalogue to be sent to me please -\r\n
Media: $media\r\n
Name: $name\r\n
Address: $address\r\n
City/Town: $city\r\n
State: $state\r\n
Post code: $postcode\r\n
Country: $country\r\n
E-mail: $email\r\n
Telephone: $telephone
TEXT;
      // sending e-mail
      mail("$sendto", "$subject", "$message");
      header('Location: thankyou.htm');
      exit();
    }
?>

No doubt he solution is staring me in the face but I have tried so many variations that I must have had the correct code at some stage and not known it. I supect that the major problem is that I am not passing the form fields to the php code correctly. (I am leaving the radio button validation to the very last)

Help!

[zalucius]

It looks like your "error" variables never change... they will always be false.

Here is a suggestion, its not a full example, however it should point you in the right direction:

<?php
if (isset($_POST['catalogue']))
{
	$errors = array();
	$submit_form = true; // assume the form is filled correct.
 
	// grab the values from the form.
	$name = trim($_POST['name']);
	$address = trim($_POST['address']);
	$email = trim($_POST['email']);
	// etc...
 
 
	// test if all fields contain valid data
	if ($name == '' || strlen($name) < 2) 
	{	
		$submit_form = false; // set submit_form to false
		$errors['name'] = 'Please supply your name.'; // store an error message.
	}
	if ($address == '')
	{
		$submit_form = false;
		$errors['adress'] = 'Please supply your address.'
	}
	if (!eregi("^[a-zA-Z0-9_]+@[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+$]", $email)) 
	{
		$submit_form = false;
		$errors['email'] = 'Please provide a valid email';
	}
	// etc...
 
	// if one or more fields did not pass PHP validation
	// $submit_form will contain false, and the script need to stop
	if(!$submit_form)
	{
		// redisplay the form, with posted data and error messages.
	}
	else
	{
		// send the mail.
	}
}
?>

[Tigers!]

Dear Zalucius
Thank you for your reply. I have been fiddling around with that code but without much much success.
The 1st problem is that when the form is correctly filled out and I choose submit I do not get the thank you message I expect. Instead I get the php code on the screen.
I am calling the php via the line

<form method="post" name="catalogue" action="cataloguetest-8.php";>

I have removed the JS portion of my code that called the client-side validation. It looks like

<form method="post" name="catalogue" onsubmit="return valFrm()" action="cataloguetest-8.php";>

How do we get the code to call both the JS validation and PHP validation? Is the command

action="cataloguetest-8.php"

correct?
The 2nd problem I could see (once I get that far!) is how to display the error messages along with the form.
Is the code below correct as it is and what is missing?

if(!$submit_form)
    {
        // redisplay the form, with posted data and error messages.
        header('location: cataloguerequestK.htm');
       ... How are the error messages displayed?...
    } 

[Waffles]

any real reason you need both java and php validation?

and for displaying the errors, something like

<?
//..

if(!$submit_form)
{
   echo '<p>There were some errors:</p>';
   print_r($errors); //add html formatting to the error messages i.e. <br />
}
?>

edit: if you're doing the form processing on another document, you won't be able to access the $POST variables from the original form again, once you leave the forms action page. (my understanding, likely to be wrong).

could just do it all on one form:

<?php 
if(isset($_POST['submit']))
{
    $name=$_POST['name'];
    $email=$_POST['email'];
        ..

    if($name == '' || $email == '' || $comments == '')
    {
        $error = '<p>Sorry, there has been an error. Please try again.';
        //or individual field validation

    } else { //all validated
        //send the mail
        $success = TRUE; 

    }
}
if(!$success) {

?>

*display the form, you can access $_POST variables here to fill in existing fields values.

<?php } ?>

[semantic7]

Following is a form/processor which will do everything in one page thereby keeping things simple with a single copy. Attached code follows template approach which enables good amount of separation of php from html making things easy to follow. Feel free ask qns if you don't understand any aspects of this code. This is by no means a complete processor but just a sample foundation which can be easily built up.

<?php

function insertError($name, $message)
{
    $error = <<<ERROR
    <tr>
        <td class="error" colspan=2 >$message</td>
    </tr>
ERROR;
    return $error;
}

function initError($formFields)
{
    foreach ($formFields as $key => $value)
    {
        $error[$value] = null;
    }
    return $error;
}

function initData($formFields)
{
    foreach ($formFields as $key => $value)
    {
        $data[$value] = null;
    }
    return $data;
}

$formFields = array('media', 'name', 'address', 'city', 'state', 'postcode', 'country', 'email', 'phone');

$error = initError($formFields);
$data = initData($formFields);
$formError = false;

if (!empty($_POST))
{
    foreach ($_POST as $key => $value)
    {
        $value = trim($value);
        if (empty($value))
        {
            $formError = true;
            $error[$key] = insertError($key, ucfirst($key) . " field was left empty");
        }

            #    MORE VALIDATION TESTS CAN BE ADDED HERE

        else
        {
            $data[$key] = $value;
        }
    }

    if (isset($formError) and !$formError)    #    CHECK IF THERE WERE ERRORS IN FORM
    {
        #    IF THERE ARE NO ERRORS START PROCESSING FORM DATA HERE
    }

}


$form = <<<FORM

<form method="post" action="request.php">

<table class="table1" border="0">
    <tr>
        <td>Media type*:</td>
        <td>
            <input type="radio" id="booklet" name="media" value="booklet" /> Booklet
            <input type="radio" id="CD" name="media" value="CD/DVD" /> CD/DVD
        </td>
    </tr>
${error['media']}
    <tr>
        <td class="c2"><label>Name*:</label></td>
        <td><input name="name" id="name" type="text" value="${data['name']}" /></td>
    </tr>
${error['name']}
    <tr>
        <td><label>Address*:</label></td>
        <td><input name="address" id="address" type="text" value="${data['address']}" /></td>
    </tr>
${error['address']}
    <tr>
        <td><label>Ciy/Town*:</label></td>
        <td><input name="city" id="city" type="text" value="${data['city']}" /></td>
    </tr>
${error['city']}
    <tr>
        <td><label>State*:</label></td>
        <td><input name="state" id="state" type="text" value="${data['state']}" /></td>
    </tr>
${error['state']}
    <tr>
        <td><label>Post Code*:</label></td>
        <td><input name="postcode" id="postcode" type="text" value="${data['postcode']}" /></td>
    </tr>
${error['postcode']}
    <tr>
        <td><label>Country*:</label></td>
        <td>
            <select name="country" id="country" size="1">
            </select>
        </td>
    </tr>
${error['country']}
    <tr>
        <td><label>E-mail*:</label></td>
        <td><input name="email" id="email" type="text" value="${data['email']}" /></td>
    </tr>
${error['email']}
    <tr>
        <td><label>Telephone:</label></td>
        <td><input name="phone" id="phone" type="text" value="${data['phone']}" /></td>
    </tr>
${error['phone']}
</table>

<input name="catalogue" id="catalogue" type="submit" value="Request catalogue" />

</form>

FORM;

if (empty($_POST) or $formError)
{
    
#    RETURNING BACK TO FORM IF THERE WERE ERRORS OR IF THE FORM IS BEING LOADED FOR THE FIRST TIME

?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

<head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
    <meta name="author" content="Peter Selvaraj" />

    <title>Untitled 1</title>
    <style type="text/css">
    
    *    {
        margin: 0;
        padding: 0;
        font-size: 100%;
        font-weight: normal;
    }
    body    {
        padding: 20px;
        font: 65.2% Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    }
    h2    {
        font-size: 1.6em;
        font-weight: bold;
        margin-bottom: 1em;
    }
    form, p    {
        font-size: 1.2em;
        margin-bottom: 1em;
    }
    form *    {
        font-size: 100%;
    }
    input    {
        padding: 3px;
    }
    table    {
        margin-bottom: 20px;
        border-collapse: collapse;
    }
    td    {
        padding: 0.5em 0;
    }
    td.error    {
        color: #f00;
        font-size: 0.9em;
        padding: 0 0 10px 0;
    }
    
    </style>
</head>

<body>

<h2>Ordering a catalogue</h2> 

<p>The items marked with a * are essential.</p>

<?php
    echo $form;        #    PRINT FORM BLOCK
?>

</body>
</html>

<?php
}
?>