Helper Validation

Name	Path
Validation Helper	/application/helpers/validation_helper.php

These methods will be your sanity checking methods. You can easily pass an array of data in and figure out if they are valid or not. Errors will be returned for each item that does not pass the evaluation.

Load the helper

$this->load->helper('validation_helper');

Methods

isValid

Return back if the value passed in is valid against the type.

Types

Name	Description
bool	Currently bool just checks if the variable is empty, if empty then return false, else return true
date	Checks for a date in the following format: 0000-00-00
datetime	Checks for a date/time in the following format: 0000-00-00 00:00:00
domain	Checks for a domain in the following format: /[A-Z0-9._-]+\.[A-Z]{2,}/i
email	regex to validate an email address
md5	Checks for a string with a length of 32.
numeric	checks if the variable is a positive number
password	regex to validate a password (min 6 characters, at least one uppercase letter and one number)
slug	Checks for a valid slug. Letter, numbers and dashes only.
string	Checks to make sure the value is a string.
time	Checks for a time in the following format: 00:00:00
url	Checks to see if a scheme and host exist.
variable	Checks for to make sure it is a valid PHP variable.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$val	mixed	N/A	Yes	The value to evaluate
$type	string	N/A	Yes	The type to validate against

Example

if (is_valid($password, 'password')) {
    // Have fun
}

---

validate

Allows you to pass three arrays to the method. Each one containing important information on what to evaluate, how to evaluate it and if it is required or not.

It is easiest to set your $data_types argument in the constructor of the model for the model you are building to keep it DRY.

This method is nice to evaluate a large portion of options at once. It calls is_valid from within the method to evaluate each item in the $options array submitted.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$options	array	array()	Yes	An array of options to evaluate. The key should be the database column name and value the value being evaluated
$data_types	array	array()	Yes	An array of data types to be used to evaluate the options. The key is the column name and the value applies to one of the data types in the `is_valid` method.
$required	array	array()	No	An array of column names that are required

Example

$required   = array('email','password');
$options    = array('email'=>'jeff@myemail.com','password'=>'Password123');
$data_types = array('email' => 'email', 'password' => 'password');

if (validate($options, $data_types, $required)) {
    //Yeah, you did it
}