Using strip_tags function - php

Question

I want to preface this question with the fact that I am a student and this is my first PHP class. So, the following question might be a bit novice...
Okay so the point of this program was for me to filter results from a form through regular expressions along with clean up the text area content...
Well as of right now, all works fine except for the strip_tags bit. I have it set to allow the tags <b> and <p>, and when I enter regular text into the text area, it returns perfectly. If I enter something such as <b>lucky</b> you, all that is returned is 'b'.
I'll post my code. If anyone can give me a hand, I'd love it. At this point I'm overly frustrated. I've studied the examples my instructor supplied (mine is almost identical) and I've looked throught the PHP.net manual and from what I read it should work...
The working code is at http://www.lampbusters.com/~beckalyce/prog3b.php
<?php
if ( $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'GET' )
{
echo <<<STARTHTML
<div class="content"><h1>Site Sign Up</h1>
<h3>Enter Information</h3>
<hr />
<form method="post" action="$_SERVER[PHP_SELF]">
<p>Full Name: <input type="text" name="fullName" size="30" /></p>
<p>Password: <input type="password" name="password" size="30" maxlength="12" /></p>
<p>Email: <input type="text" name="email" size="30"/></p>
<p>Tell us about yourself:<br />
<textarea name="aboutYou" rows="5" cols="40"></textarea><br />
<input type="submit" name="submitted" value="submit" /> <input type="reset" /></p>
</form></div>
STARTHTML;
}
elseif ( $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST')
{
$errors = array();
$dirtyName = $_POST['fullName'];
$filterName = '/(\w+ ?){1,4}/';
if (preg_match($filterName, $dirtyName, $matchName))
{
$cleanedName = ucwords(strtolower(trim(strip_tags(stripslashes($matchName[0])))));
}
else
{
$errors[] = "Enter a valid name. <br />";
}
$dirtyPass = $_POST['password'];
$filterPass = '/[a-zA-Z0-91##$%^&*]{8,12}/';
if (preg_match($filterPass, $dirtyPass, $matchPass))
{
$cleanedPass = $matchPass[0];
}
else
{
$errors[] = "Enter a valid password. <br />";
}
$dirtyEmail = $_POST['email'];
$filterEmail = '/^(?:\w+[.+-_]?){1,4}(?:\w+)#(?:\w+\.){1,3}\w{2,4}/';
if (preg_match($filterEmail, $dirtyEmail, $matchEmail))
{
$cleanedEmail = $matchEmail[0];
}
else
{
$errors[] = "Enter a valid email address. <br />";
}
$dirtyText = $_POST['aboutYou'];
$filterText = '/((\w+)[ ."\'?!,-]{0,3})+/';
if (preg_match($filterText, $dirtyText, $matchText))
{
$validText = $matchText[0];
$ignore = '<b><p>';
$notags = strip_tags($validText,$ignore);
$cleanedText = preg_replace('/fuck|shit|ass|bitch|android/i',"*****",$notags);
}
else
{
$errors[] = "Enter information about yourself. <br />";
}
if (count($errors) == 0)
{
echo <<<STARTHTML2
<div class="content"><h1>Site Sign Up</h1>
<h3>Verify your information</h3>
<hr />
Name: <span class="choices"> $cleanedName <br /></span>
Password: <span class="choices">$cleanedPass <br /></span>
Email: <span class="choices">$cleanedEmail <br /></span>
About you: <span class="choices">$cleanedText <br /></span>
STARTHTML2;
}
else
{
echo "<div class=\"content\">Please correct the following errors:<br />\n";
$errnum = 1;
foreach ($errors as $inderr)
{
echo "$errnum. $inderr";
$errnum++;
}
}
echo '<br />Back to Form';
echo '</div>';
echo '<p style="text-align: center">' . date('l, F d, Y') . '</p>';
}
?>

Answer 1

It doesn't look like your regular expression allows for the < and > characters, also, if it was meant to match the entire text, it should start with ^ and end with $, otherwise it will just match on a small section of the input as best it can according to the pattern which is likely what happened to simply return 'b' in $match[0] when supplying <b>TextHere