[thelist] PHP Form Validation

shawn allen shawn at alterior.net
Mon Jan 6 17:04:01 CST 2003


quoth .jeff:
(me)
> > No, it's not a *requirement*, it's a preference, and more
> > importantly, a privilege.  A website that denies me the right to
> > either my preferences or my privileges loses my business.
>
> which is it?  a right?  or, a privilege?  make up your mind man.

Point. I worded that very poorly... It's a right. And I've been pretty
plussed (pun intended) by sites that made me use my "real" address
because their validation routines were built upon overly simplistic
regular expressions... Hell, I've seen some that don't allow periods,
and some that only allow a single period in the hostname token. Some
don't allow hyphens *anywhere*. My point is, at some point it may not
make sense to "validate" email addresses if you're going to reject some
that are perfectly valid. You don't seem to think so, though, so let's
just agree to disagree.

> easier to filter too, should i need to at some point.  more difficult for
> the person bearing the "personalized" email address to find out my actual
> pop account address as well.

True that.

> > [...] Seriously though, if you're running a business, would you risk
> > losing any number of customers just because you didn't feel like
> > changing your regular expression? Do you *really* need those %'s in
> > there? :P
>
> naw, you're right.  you've convinced me.  i'm going to add in a regex
> replace routine that removes any thing after a +, but before the @.
> *then* i'll run the regex against it to see if it's valid syntax and
> if so, do what's necessary with the fixed email address.  now i can
> keep lusers from putting in larttarget at aol as an email address and
> allow you and that one other d00d that use plussed addresses to do
> your thing as well.

I know a bunch of people without (administrative) access to their mail
server that use this method to track their email addresses. It's a
pretty common practice. Regardless, thanks for the suggestion of using a
catch-all account instead... If it's any consolation, that's probably
what I'll end up doing. ;)

--
shawn allen
  mailto://shawn@alterior.net
  phone://415.577.3961
  http://alterior.net
  aim://shawnpallen




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