Validate email address in PHP

Imagine you are coding a new PHP project and you realize you need to validate email addresses e.g. from sign-up or newsletter form.

Fortunately PHP comes with very handy function filter_var which is available since PHP version 5.2.0. In general, this validates email addresses against the addr-spec syntax in RFC 822, with the exceptions that comments and whitespace folding and dotless domain names are not supported.

Ok, let's see how to validate email address format in a real example:

$email = $_POST["email"];

if (!filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    echo "Invalid email format";
    //do your stuff here
}

Pretty simple, huh? While this logic is straightforward, students often require more detailed guidance when integrating such features into complex programming assignments.

Keep in mind that this code only validates the email format. A proper registration process should also send a verification email to the user immediately after signup.

You can also verify user's email address with our simple email validation API where you get 99% sure the email is valid and deliverable.