Re: validating textarea using php

Quoting Sudhakar <sudhakararaog@gmail.com>:

hi i need to validate textarea of a html form using php <textarea name="comments" cols="26" rows="3" id="comments"><?php echo($comments);?></textarea> presently my php code to validate the text area is if($comments == "" ) { $error.="<br>Please enter your comments"; } with this code if a user hits the space bar once or couple of times as a matter of fact there are no characters entered by the user i do not want this to happen, if a user simply hits the spacebar and does not type anything i should be able to display an alert message. please advice how i can change the above php code.

PHP is sevrer sided. So if you want to check if a user provided the textarea with input. You have to submit the page. and let PHP do the magic. If the textarea is not filled. You could send the user back to the form. With an apropriat warning message. It's probably easier to do it with client side javascript. Check the contents of the textarea on submit and preform some actions from there.