how to create username from email address provided - PHP - php

Question

I have a signup page on my website where a user must provide a email address and password only.
I want to be able to create a username for this user automatically by using the first part of the email provided;
User supplies gordon#yourdomain.com, i want to make username 'gordon'
I don't need explanation on how to create form or submission of data to database, just the code to extract data from email provided, and if necessary, if duplicate occurs add number to end.
Hope this makes sense, seems like a basic function but couldn't find examples of it anywhere on net!

Answer 1

This is not a good idea, just use their full email address. The following email addresses could be different people, but they will become the same under your system.
samename#gmail.com
samename#yahoo.com
Adding a number to the end will make the user remember something unique to your system and cause much confusion on their end.

Answer 2

Agreed, you're stripping a necessarily unique ID into a non-unique ID. Unless you want to add some sort of handling to add a number to the username or something. If that's what you really want to do, this should set $username to the stuff before the email address:
<?php
$username = preg_replace('/([^#]*).*/', '$1', $email);
?>

Answer 3

Something like:
$username = left($email, stripos($email, '#'));
should do. You may want to learn regular expressions for these kinds of task.
Then you add the counter:
function countOccurrences($name)
{
$con = mysql_connect(___, ___, ___);
if (!$con)
{
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
mysql_select_db(___, $con);
$result = mysql_query("
SELECT COUNT(*) AS countOccurrences
FROM users
WHERE username LIKE '" . mysql_real_escape_string($name, $con) . "%'
");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$number = $row['countOccurrences'];
mysql_close($con);
return $number;
}
and then:
$countUsers = countOccurrences($username);
if ($countUsers>0)
{
$username = $username . $countUsers;
}
IMPORTANT: Consider using the whole email as username: you don't want gordon#flash.net to be considered equal to gordon#clash.com
NOTE: example code counts gordon, gordon1, gordon2 but gordonbah, gordonq, gordonxxx too
NOTE: this is pretty rough, and should not be considered best PHP practice; it's just to give the general idea

Answer 4

$username = gordon#example.com;
$username_arr = explode('#',$username);
$username = $username_arr[0];
if( !is_taken( $username ) )
{
//The name is not taken.
}
else
{
//The name is taken, add numbers and do the search again.
}
function is_taken( $username )
{
$db_link = mysql_connect($host,$user,$pass) or die('Could not connect to database');
$username = mysql_real_escape_string( $username );
$sql = "SELECT * FROM `database`.`users` WHERE `username` = '$username'";
$res = mysql_query( $sql , $db_link );
return mysql_num_rows( $res ) == 1;
}

Answer 5

<?php
preg_match('/[^#]+)#/',$email,$matches);
$username = $matches[1];
check_availability($username);
?>

Answer 6

Should suit your needs :D
$username = substr($username, 0, strpos($username, '#'));
$username = mysql_real_escape_string($username);
$result = mysql_query('SELECT `username` FROM `users` WHERE `username` = \'' . $username . '%\';');
if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {
$i = 0;
while ($name_arr = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$name = $name_arr['username'];
$after = substr($name, strlen($username));
if (ctype_digit($after)) {
if (($after = (int) $after) > $i) {
$i = $after;
}
}
}
if ($i > 0) {
$username .= $i;
}
}

Answer 7

As of PHP 5.3.0 you can also use:
$email = 'test#stackoverflow.com';
$user = strstr($email, '#', true);
This will return all the string from the beginning to the first occurrence of '#'. Which in this case is:
test

Answer 8

I use something like this,
$cust_email = "test#gmail.com";
$parts = explode("#", $cust_email);
$cust_name = $parts[0];
I use to set default User Name if user do not set his / her name in the profile.

Answer 9

You can use strstr function to find specific word from string
<?php
$username = strstr("username#domain.com",'#',true); //get text before #
/*
echo strstr("username#domain.com","#"); // get text after #
*/
check_availability($username);
?>