Re: [PHP] validating textarea using php

> i need to validate textarea of a html form using php
> 
> <textarea name="comments" cols="26" rows="3" id="comments"><?php
> echo($comments);?></textarea>

You really should use htmlspecialchars before showing any user 
stipulated HTML to help prevent security holes. Also you can use short 
tags (popular...) to make the HTML more readable. Eg:

<textarea name="comments" cols="26" rows="3" id="comments">
     <?=htmlspecialchars($comments)?>
</textarea>

> presently my php code to validate the text area is
> 
> if($comments == "" )

You should not rely on register_globals, and use either $_GET or $_POST 
instead depending on which methoed to send your form details back to the 
server. Eg:

if($_POST['comments'] == '' ) {
     ...
}

> with this code if a user hits the space bar once or couple of times as a
> matter of fact there are no characters entered by the user i do not want
> this to happen, if a user simply hits the spacebar and does not type
> anything i should be able to display an alert message.

You can use the trim() function to determine whether a variable is just 
whitespace.

$comments = trim($_POST['comments']);

if ($comments == '') {
	// Show error message
}

-- 
Richard Heyes

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