igoring condition during submit form in PHP

Question

I am trying to put a condition in my form submit. I want to check there no any empty value in my any filed. In my form, I have two textarea and one file upload section.

I have put a condition like below

if (($_POST['question'] != "") AND ($_POST['answer'] != "") AND ($_FILES['picture_name']['name'] != "")) {
echo "ok";
}
else {
echo "field empty";
}

its giving error if file upload or question is empty but its accept and echo ok even answer is empty. Let me know if there anything wrong in my condition. Thanks

Can you also post the corresponding HTML code which leads to calling of this PHP code? — kiner_shah, Nov 25 '18 at 06:31
Hi! sorry! there was space in my textarea so we was not able to detect it as empty. — Raju Bhatt, Nov 25 '18 at 06:40
So basically you had some extra spaces at the end or beginning which caused problem? If that's that, then you should trim the strings before checking. See [this](https://stackoverflow.com/q/4710440/4688321) link — kiner_shah, Nov 25 '18 at 06:42

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 25 '18 at 06:29

1

This may help...

if (!empty($_POST['question']) && !empty($_POST['answer']) && is_uploaded_file($_FILES['myfile']['tmp_name'])) {
echo "ok";
}
else {
echo "field empty";
}

answered Nov 25 '18 at 06:29

onejeet

1,191
6
14

Can you explain, why using `!= ""` fails? – kiner_shah Nov 25 '18 at 06:30
`empty()` function is better than **!= ""** – Mahfuzar Rahman Nov 25 '18 at 06:32
because (null, false, 0, empty string) doesn't equal to "" – onejeet Nov 25 '18 at 06:34
1

Yes. isset(), empty() are good to go with. Please read... https://alexchernomaz.com/2014/10/14/php-empty-isset-is_null/ – onejeet Nov 25 '18 at 06:36
I think what should be used is `isset()`: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3497060/4688321 – kiner_shah Nov 25 '18 at 06:40
Yeah. you can go as per the requirements. – onejeet Nov 25 '18 at 06:41
The problem with using `empty()` though is that it will return TRUE even if it's checking against an unset variable. – jerdiggity Nov 25 '18 at 06:57

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 25 '18 at 06:52

I find it best to check for and eliminate all problems before continuing to process code. Hopefully this will get you on the right track as to what may or may not be going as planned.

<?php

$problems = array();
// Check the obvious first.
if (empty($_POST) || empty($_FILES)) {
  if (empty($_POST)) {
    $problems[] = 'POST empty';
  }
  if (empty($_FILES)) {
    $problems[] = 'FILES empty';
  }
}
// If those tests passed, proceed to check other details
else {
  // Check if the array keys are set
  if (!isset($_POST['question']) || !isset($_POST['answer'])) {
    if (!isset($_POST['question'])) {
      $problems[] = 'Question not set';
    }
    if (!isset($_POST['answer'])) {
      $problems[] = 'Answer not set';
    }
  }
  else {
    // If those tests passed, check if the values are an empty string.
    if ($_POST['question'] == "" || $_POST['answer'] == "") {
      if ($_POST['question'] == "") {
        $problems[] = 'Question empty';
      }
      if ($_POST['answer'] == "") {
        $problems[] = 'Answer empty';
      }
    }
  }

  // There are many ways to eliminate problems... The next few lines
  // are slightly different since they use elseif conditions (meaning
  // only one of them will be displayed, if any).
  if (!isset($_FILES['picture_name'])) {
    $problems[] = 'Picture name not set';
  }
  elseif (empty($_FILES['picture_name'])) {
    $problems[] = 'Picture name empty';
  }
  elseif (!isset($_FILES['picture_name']['name'])) {
    $problems[] = 'Picture filename not set';
  }
  elseif (empty($_FILES['picture_name']['name'])) {
    $problems[] = 'Picture filename empty';
  }
}

// If $problems array is still empty, everything should be OK
if (empty($problems)) {
  $outcome = 'OK';
}
// If $problems array has values, glue them together and display
// each one on a new line
else {
  $outcome = implode(PHP_EOL, $problems);
}

echo $outcome;

igoring condition during submit form in PHP

2 Answers2