Wicked Cool PHP

#32: Checking Valid Email Addresses

Customers enter all sorts of weird data into email form fields. The script in this section verifies that an email address mostly follows the rules outlined in RFC 2822. This won't prevent someone from entering a false (but RFCcompliant) email address such as [e-mail], but it will catch some typos.

Note

If having a valid email address is critical, you need to require user accounts that are activated by links sent only via email. You'll see how to do this in "#65: Using Email to Verify User Accounts" on What Can Go Wrong?. This is a fairly extreme measure; if you want more people to share their addresses with you, simply tell users that you won't spam them (and make good on that promise) ...