Formvalidator check even if value is empty - php

Question

Thanks to this forum I came across below form validator some time back which work fine. However, I just have one problem.
When submitting a form with an empty textarea for instance it return the empty field as an error. However, as the value is not mandatory I need to correct this somehow.
<?php
/**
* Pork Formvalidator. validates fields by regexes and can sanatize them. Uses PHP filter_var built-in functions and extra regexes
* #package pork
*/
/**
* Pork.FormValidator
* Validates arrays or properties by setting up simple arrays
*
* #package pork
* #author SchizoDuckie
* #copyright SchizoDuckie 2009
* #version 1.0
* #access public
*/
class FormValidator
{
public static $regexes = Array(
'date' => "^[0-9]{4}[-/][0-9]{1,2}[-/][0-9]{1,2}\$",
'datetime' => "20\d{2}(-|\/)((0[1-9])|(1[0-2]))(-|\/)((0[1-9])|([1-2][0-9])|(3[0-1]))(T|\s)(([0-1][0-9])|(2[0-3])):([0-5][0-9]):([0-5][0-9])",
'amount' => "^[-]?[0-9]+\$",
'number' => "^[-]?[0-9,]+\$",
'alfanum' => "^[0-9a-zA-Z ,.-_\\s\?\!]+\$",
'not_empty' => "[a-z0-9A-Z]+",
'words' => "^[A-Za-z]+[A-Za-z \\s]*\$",
'phone' => "^[0-9]{10,11}\$",
'zipcode' => "^[1-9][0-9]{3}[a-zA-Z]{2}\$",
'plate' => "^([0-9a-zA-Z]{2}[-]){2}[0-9a-zA-Z]{2}\$",
'price' => "^[0-9.,]*(([.,][-])|([.,][0-9]{2}))?\$",
'2digitopt' => "^\d+(\,\d{2})?\$",
'2digitforce' => "^\d+\,\d\d\$",
'anything' => "^[\d\D]{1,}\$",
'username' => "^[\w]{3,32}\$"
);
private $validations, $sanatations, $mandatories, $equal, $errors, $corrects, $fields;
public function __construct($validations=array(), $mandatories = array(), $sanatations = array(), $equal=array())
{
$this->validations = $validations;
$this->sanatations = $sanatations;
$this->mandatories = $mandatories;
$this->equal = $equal;
$this->errors = array();
$this->corrects = array();
}
/**
* Validates an array of items (if needed) and returns true or false
*
* JP modofied this function so that it checks fields even if they are not submitted.
* for example the original code did not check for a mandatory field if it was not submitted.
* Also the types of non mandatory fields were not checked.
*/
public function validate($items)
{
$this->fields = $items;
$havefailures = false;
//Check for mandatories
foreach($this->mandatories as $key=>$val)
{
if(!array_key_exists($val,$items))
{
$havefailures = true;
$this->addError($val);
}
}
//Check for equal fields
foreach($this->equal as $key=>$val)
{
//check that the equals field exists
if(!array_key_exists($key,$items))
{
$havefailures = true;
$this->addError($val);
}
//check that the field it's supposed to equal exists
if(!array_key_exists($val,$items))
{
$havefailures = true;
$this->addError($val);
}
//Check that the two fields are equal
if($items[$key] != $items[$val])
{
$havefailures = true;
$this->addError($key);
}
}
foreach($this->validations as $key=>$val)
{
//An empty value or one that is not in the list of validations or one that is not in our list of mandatories
if(!array_key_exists($key,$items))
{
$this->addError($key, $val);
continue;
}
$result = self::validateItem($items[$key], $val);
if($result === false) {
$havefailures = true;
$this->addError($key, $val);
}
else
{
$this->corrects[] = $key;
}
}
return(!$havefailures);
}
/* JP
* Returns a JSON encoded array containing the names of fields with errors and those without.
*/
public function getJSON() {
$errors = array();
$correct = array();
if(!empty($this->errors))
{
foreach($this->errors as $key=>$val) { $errors[$key] = $val; }
}
if(!empty($this->corrects))
{
foreach($this->corrects as $key=>$val) { $correct[$key] = $val; }
}
$output = array('errors' => $errors, 'correct' => $correct);
return json_encode($output);
}
/**
*
* Sanatizes an array of items according to the $this->sanatations
* sanatations will be standard of type string, but can also be specified.
* For ease of use, this syntax is accepted:
* $sanatations = array('fieldname', 'otherfieldname'=>'float');
*/
public function sanatize($items)
{
foreach($items as $key=>$val)
{
if(array_search($key, $this->sanatations) === false && !array_key_exists($key, $this->sanatations)) continue;
$items[$key] = self::sanatizeItem($val, $this->validations[$key]);
}
return($items);
}
/**
*
* Adds an error to the errors array.
*/
private function addError($field, $type='string')
{
$this->errors[$field] = $type;
}
/**
*
* Sanatize a single var according to $type.
* Allows for static calling to allow simple sanatization
*/
public static function sanatizeItem($var, $type)
{
$flags = NULL;
switch($type)
{
case 'url':
$filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_URL;
break;
case 'int':
$filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT;
break;
case 'float':
$filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_FLOAT;
$flags = FILTER_FLAG_ALLOW_FRACTION | FILTER_FLAG_ALLOW_THOUSAND;
break;
case 'email':
$var = substr($var, 0, 254);
$filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL;
break;
case 'string':
default:
$filter = FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING;
$flags = FILTER_FLAG_NO_ENCODE_QUOTES;
break;
}
$output = filter_var($var, $filter, $flags);
return($output);
}
/**
*
* Validates a single var according to $type.
* Allows for static calling to allow simple validation.
*
*/
public static function validateItem($var, $type)
{
if(array_key_exists($type, self::$regexes))
{
$returnval = filter_var($var, FILTER_VALIDATE_REGEXP, array("options"=> array("regexp"=>'!'.self::$regexes[$type].'!i'))) !== false;
return($returnval);
}
$filter = false;
switch($type)
{
case 'email':
$var = substr($var, 0, 254);
$filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL;
break;
case 'int':
$filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_INT;
break;
case 'boolean':
$filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN;
break;
case 'ip':
$filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_IP;
break;
case 'url':
$filter = FILTER_VALIDATE_URL;
break;
}
return ($filter === false) ? false : filter_var($var, $filter) !== false ? true : false;
}
}
?>
So from what I understand I need to come up with a a way to validate an empty string as the above code will throw an error.
$validations = array(
'id' => 'number', //Value in _POST['id'] = '11'
'time' => 'datetime', //Value in _POST['time'] = '2016-03-17T11:05:01'
'description' => 'anything'); //Value in _POST['decription'] = ''
$required = array('id', 'time');
$validator = new FormValidator($validations, $required);
$validator->validate($_POST);
print_r $validator->getJSON();

Answer 1

You should either make the field required and add something like this
// validation
if (empty($variable)) {
echo 'such&such is required<br />';
$ok = false;
}
Or make the variable ="" or null;