I found this helpful little email validation script a while back on linuxjournal.com and have been using this great validation script from Douglas Lovell for some time. Although email validation is never 100% fool-proof, this one is pretty great, so I thought I’d share.
To use this function simply check to see that an email is valid by checking that the function returns true on an email:
$email = 'someone@something.com';
if (validEmail($email)) {
//The email is valid. Continue processing.
} else {
//The email is not valid. Set errors or whatever you want to do.
}
/**
Validate an email address.
Provide email address (raw input)
Returns true if the email address has the email
address format and the domain exists.
*/
function validEmail($email)
{
$isValid = true;
$atIndex = strrpos($email, "@");
if (is_bool($atIndex) && !$atIndex)
{
$isValid = false;
}
else
{
$domain = substr($email, $atIndex+1);
$local = substr($email, 0, $atIndex);
$localLen = strlen($local);
$domainLen = strlen($domain);
if ($localLen < 1 || $localLen > 64)
{
// local part length exceeded
$isValid = false;
}
else if ($domainLen < 1 || $domainLen > 255)
{
// domain part length exceeded
$isValid = false;
}
else if ($local[0] == '.' || $local[$localLen-1] == '.')
{
// local part starts or ends with '.'
$isValid = false;
}
else if (preg_match('/\\.\\./', $local))
{
// local part has two consecutive dots
$isValid = false;
}
else if (!preg_match('/^[A-Za-z0-9\\-\\.]+$/', $domain))
{
// character not valid in domain part
$isValid = false;
}
else if (preg_match('/\\.\\./', $domain))
{
// domain part has two consecutive dots
$isValid = false;
}
else if
(!preg_match('/^(\\\\.|[A-Za-z0-9!#%&`_=\\/$\'*+?^{}|~.-])+$/',
str_replace("\\\\","",$local)))
{
// character not valid in local part unless
// local part is quoted
if (!preg_match('/^"(\\\\"|[^"])+"$/',
str_replace("\\\\","",$local)))
{
$isValid = false;
}
}
if ($isValid && !(checkdnsrr($domain,"MX") ||
↪checkdnsrr($domain,"A")))
{
// domain not found in DNS
$isValid = false;
}
}
return $isValid;
}