WordPress Comment Validation With Php

[everton.retweets]

Hi Everyone, Especially those who are more experienced than others.

I have been teaching myself php over the last 18 months and whilst I can do what I think are basic tasks, the more difficult tasks, well, are more difficult and take much longer to complete.

The reason for my post is this. I am trying to design a bespoke WordPress comment form with additional fields. I have had some help, some of it I understand, the other bits, I am looking into.

What I would like to do, is add my own input validation & error messages, but I haven't got the foggiest idea where to start or how to add them to the WP comments php file.

I have created a replica php file with the same variables as the wp comment variables, Author, Email, Url, Comments & added my own two additional fields.

Now the fun begins.
I have the test form validating required input. ie. Name required, Invalid email address etc.

Here is the post vars - in the test comment form

    $author = $_POST['author'];
    $email = $_POST['email'];
    $url = $_POST['url'];
    $country = $_POST['country'];
    $dialingCode = $_POST['dialingCode'];
    $phone = $_POST['phone'];
    $comment = $_POST['comment'];

Here is how I am checking and displaying validation error messages in the test wp comments form

//author select
    if(!$author) 
    {
        $hint = 'author';
        registerError( $hint, $hint, $error_title, 'Name is required' );
        $b1=false;
    }

What I would like to know is, how could I add this type of php to the wp comments form.
I have looked over some fo the code and most of it looks like this...

    if ( ( isset( $_POST['phone'] ) ) && ( $_POST['phone'] != '') )
     $phone = wp_filter_nohtml_kses($_POST['phone']);

Am I right in saying that I can add the same type of code as above for author,email & url?
And add the above error message as an elseif statement?

I would, and I am sure other would like to know how to our own validation to wp comments.

Hoping someone can take the timeto explain this to me and others who are less expereinced.

[techberry.org]

It would be nice if you posted the complete wordpress code. Personally I don't see why you feel the need to assign new variables to each post var when you could just use the post vars themselves? It seems like a bit of unnessasary memory usage. Same with the 5 parameter function registerError, I don't know if that's just me but surely that isn't the best way of passing around variables. Anyway those are just my comments.

<?php
     $i=0;
     if(isset($_POST['phone']){
        if($_POST['phone'] != ''){
            $phone = wp_filter_nohtml_kses($_POST['phone']);
            $i++
        }else{
            echo 'Phone number is empty';
            // Or your error function ..
        }
     }else{
         echo 'Invalid request';
     }
     // I assume wordpress does this for ever other post var right?
?>

I geuss you could take that approach and then if $i==number of post vars you need then all variables have passed validation. But, to me that's a bit of a code smell.

I'm sorry I can't give you a straight forward answer but I can't see how the comment form is being processed in just 2 lines of php...

[everton.retweets]

Hi user22343234 and thanks for your input -

Here is the code -

What I am trying to do is stop wordpress from displaying wp-comments-post.php
and having the user click back. It's so annoying.

add_action( 'comment_post', 'save_comment_meta_data' );
function save_comment_meta_data( $comment_id ) {
global $wpdb;
    if ( ( isset( $_POST['phone'] ) ) && ( $_POST['phone'] != '') )
     $phone = wp_filter_nohtml_kses($_POST['phone']);

    if ( ( isset( $_POST['country'] ) ) && ( $_POST['country'] != '') )
    $country = wp_filter_nohtml_kses($_POST['country']);

    $res = $wpdb->get_var( $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT `DialingCode` FROM wp_form_country WHERE Country = %s", $country ) );

    $phone = ($country == "United Kingdom") ? $res.substr($phone,1) : $res.substr($phone,0);

    $ref = rand(23456789,98765432); 

    $qry ="UPDATE `".$wpdb->prefix."comments` SET  `comment_country` =  '$country',`comment_number` =  '$phone',`comment_svcode` = '$ref' WHERE  `wp_comments`.`comment_ID` =$comment_id";

     $wpdb->query($qry);

    }

[everton.retweets]

What im looking at doing is have error messages for each input, author,email,url,country,phone & comment....

But im trying to have them displayed on the comment form.

[techberry.org]

Well if you want them displayed neatly on the form you could always use ajax or simply create a session on error and redirect back to the comment form on where a simple error message will display if session is set.

I personally have never used wordpress but would recommend ditching the whole wordpress comment plugin and building it from scratch if that is an option.

Though of course you can make a work-around.
Here is how I would approach your problem (I like making my scripts concise):

<?php
class comment{
    private $fieldNames;
    function __construct(){
        session_start();
        $this->fieldNames = array(
            'author' => '',
            'email' => '',
            'url' => '',
            'country' => '',
            'dialingCode' => '',
            'phone' => '',
            'comment' => '',
            'submit' => 'true', // Submit button is also a post variable
        );
        foreach($_POST as $key => $val){
            if(array_key_exists($key,$this->fieldNames)){
                $this->fieldNames[$key] = $val;
            }else{
                // An unknown post var was sent, carry on or process?
                echo 'an unknown key was passed';
            }
        }
        $return = array_keys($this->fieldNames,'');
        if($return==false){
            // carry onto wordpress functions as all where sent
        }else{
            foreach($return as $key => $val){
                echo 'missing following field: ' . $val . '<br>';
            }
        }
    }
}
$comment = new comment();
?>

This approach avoids lots of switch and if statements. I wasn't going to write the whole thing up for you and this short snippet only checks if the post variables are being sent and whether or not they're empty.

I hope this can set you on the right path but I'm sure lots of if and else statements would suffice too.

.. and Yes I have tested it, it does work.

[everton.retweets]

This looks brilliant for me to be geting my hads dirty with,
Thanks very much for your time and code.