Placing proper filed name error print out for validation - php

Question

I am working on my first form validation. The issue that I am having is error reporting to the use.
I used an array to set up my criteria/rules for the fields:
$validate = new Validation;
$validation = $validate->check($_POST, array(
'FirstName' => array(
'name' => 'First Name',
'required' => 'TRUE'),
'LastName' => array(
'name' => 'Last Name',
'required' => TRUE));
I would like to have an error show that tells the user he/she is missing a required field without show the field name, for example: FirstName is required. I would like to see: First Name is required.
I looped through each array:
public function check($source, $items = array())
foreach($items as $item => $rules){
foreach($rules as $rule => $rule_value){
echo "{$item} {$rule} must be {$rule_value}<br>";
}
}
}
When I echo out the loops I my criteria, however, When I would try to echo out $rule_value [0], I would only get the first letter of that array.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I think that you may get rid of the second foreach loop and do something like this:
public function check($source, $items = array())
{
// In your example you have two arrays in $items so the following
// foreach will iterate two times
foreach($items as $item => $values) {
// $item is going to be 'FirstName' on the first iteration
// and 'LastName' on the second iteration
//
// $values are going to be the array that's associated
// with 'FirstName' => array(...) and 'LastName' => array(...)
// i.e. $values = array('name' => '...', 'required' = TRUE/FALSE)
// Therefore, you can easily check if a given $item is required
// and if the $source contains that $item or not:
if ($values['required'] && empty($source[$item])) {
echo "{$values['name']} is required!";
}
// EDIT for your comment - validating the string length
if ( $values['minLength']
&& strlen($source[$item]) < $values['minLength'])
{
echo "{$values['name']} must be at least {$values['minLength']} characters.";
}
}
}
What the code above does is that it goes through all elements of $items and if it finds a required field, it then checks whether the $source has the appropriate value or not (or if it's empty) and echoes an error (you may want to do different validations, this is just to illustrate an example).
Footnote: By the way, I'm not sure how you separate the view and the model but I find it useful not to echo right from the logic functions. So in your check function I'd build up an array/object with all that validation errors and I'd return it to the view - which would take care of displaying the errors. This way, you could control where the errors appear visually as I'm thinking it is perhaps useful to highlight each form field with its error.