Email Verification

[Lop]

I've created the anti spam image from the help of you guys:

http://forum.codecall.net/php/1536-n...generator.html


Now, how do I go about creating a verification email with all kinds of wierd characters and symbols at the end like you receive from these forums and everywhere else you sign up?

[doodlebug]

Came accross this a couple of days ago might be worth considering:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/php/emailtools.php - demo

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/php/dnl...ile=4&action=0 - download

[John]

After thinking about it for a few minutes I came up with an idea, but im not sure its the same way the forums do it. I dont have any smaple code but ill walk you through what i would do.

1) Create a random function that generates a random string say 20 characters long and returns the value.

2) When the user registers, have the unique string generated and pared with the user in the database. Maybe I would setup the database like this:

users:

id     username       password             email                      valid
1      sidewinder      1235456       Sidewinder@asdf.com    12asd54f1d$ad5fd1112

where valid is the random string.

3) Auto generate the email that sends a link like:

Click the following link to activate your account:
http://www.yourdomain.com/validate.php?name=Sidewinder&validation_number=12a sd54f1d$ad5fd1112

4) Have the validate.php script check to see if $_GET['validation_number'] is the same as the string paired with that user [Sidewinder] in the database

If it is the same, have the value of valid updated to "yes" and just make your login session checks to see if the user is valid

of course you could just create a table of queed users that are "invalid" and when they go to validate their account, the validate.php could do the stuff above and then transfer their db information to the users table that are "valid" users, that way you would have the valid column in your users table taking up extra bytes...but i think you get the general idea

just my 2 cents

[John]

Originally Posted by doodlebug

Came accross this a couple of days ago might be worth considering:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/php/emailtools.php - demo

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/php/dnl...ile=4&action=0 - download

I believe thats to verify what the user inputed is an email address. If I understood correctly, he wants to make the user activate their account by clicking on a link sent to them via email.

[Ronin]

Sidewinder has it about the way I thought of doing it when I read this post.

Check Here


Many applications in the field of Web development need to validate email addresses. While this can be done in a variety of ways, one simple but effective way involves writing your own functions in PHP. Alejandro Gervasio explains this approach.

Within the huge and fascinating field of Web development, one of the most common tasks that many applications have to deal with is, undoubtedly, verifying whether a user email address is valid. Certainly, this should sound very familiar to most Web developers, whether they are setting up their first consciously-coded script or implementing full-blown applications required to handle more complex processes. Whatever the case, validating a visitor's email address to see if it belongs to a real domain is always a good step to help you avoid, at least partially, several possible problems that arise when applications are receiving incoming bogus data. From cluttering up databases with invalid information, to sending newsletters or similar content to email addresses at nonexistent domains, headaches are surely going to come up from receiving fake email.

Several approaches can be taken to address the problem, depending on the level of complexity desired for the validation itself. If the application is going to make use of a basic level of validation, a quick-and-dirty way to handle the situation might be to implement a simple PHP function that performs pattern matching to a standardized email address format, as we have seen many times. However, when a deeper and more complex validation is required, we should take a look at well-trusted validation classes, such as Pear’s HTML_Quick Form class, or many other validation classes widely available out there.

The third option involves writing our own set of functions for in-deep email address checking, which can be considered an intermediate solution between the two above described. This approach is versatile and portable enough to be used whether we want to expand basic validating functions or add extra functionality to existing classes.

[TkTech]

Sidewinder, thats exatyl the typical model used in things such as a forum. If you go with what Sidewinder said, you wont be hard off.

[businessman332211]

That's called a captcha, they take a few minutes to create or you could use third party software.

[John]

Originally Posted by businessman332211

That's called a captcha, they take a few minutes to create or you could use third party software.

A CAPTCHA is a random string of characters generated over an image, here is an earlier post that discussed that

http://forum.codecall.net/php/1536-n...generator.html