PHP Tutorial Laravel 4 Framework (Authentication) - Creating User Account III

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Laravel 4

Note

This tutorial is the continuation from Creating user account II - POST.

More forms

We want to have more fields related to the account creation. So, let's modify create.blade.php:

@extends('layout.main')

@section('content')
	<form action="{{ URL::route('account-create-post') }}" method="post">

		<div class="field">
			Email: <input type="text" name="email">
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Username: <input type="text" name="username">
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Password: <input type="password" name="password">
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Password again: <input type="password" name="password_again">
		</div>

		<input type="submit" value="Create account">
		{{ Form::token() }}
	</form>
@stop

Let's see what's been changed when we hit the uri:

If we hit the root:

Adding functionality to the forms

Now that we have forms, it's time to add functionality to those forms as well as validation and error handling.

Let's open AccountController.php and so a test:

public function postCreate() {
	print_r(Input::all());
}

When we hit "Create account", it returns an array like this:

Using the Input::all(), we can put validator:

<?php
class AccountController extends BaseController {

	/* Viewing the form */
	public function getCreate() {
		return View::make('account.create');
	}

	/* Submitting the form */
	public function postCreate() {
		$validator = Validator::make(Input::all(),
			array(
				'email' 		=> 'required|max:50|email|unique:users',
				'username'		=> 'required|max:20|min:3|unique:users',
				'password'		=> 'required|min:6',
				'password_again'=> 'required|same:password'
			)
		);

		if($validator->fails()) {
			return Redirect::route('account-create')
				->withErrors($validator)
				->withInput();   // redirect with inputs

		} else {
			// create an account

		}
	}
}

We need to add error output to create.blade.php:

@extends('layout.main')

@section('content')
   
        <pre>{{ print_r($errors) }}</pre>

	<form action="{{ URL::route('account-create-post') }}" method="post">

		<div class="field">
			Email: <input type="text" name="email">
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Username: <input type="text" name="username">
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Password: <input type="password" name="password">
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Password again: <input type="password" name="password_again">
		</div>

		<input type="submit" value="Create account">
		{{ Form::token() }}
	</form>
@stop

Testing the forms

If we click the "Create account" button without filling any data or wrong format, we get the following on our page:

Obviously, that kind of error messages are not desirable since it's not user friendly. So, we need to handle each error for each field.

<div class="field">
	Email: <input type="text" name="email">
	@if($errors->has('email'))
		{{ $errors->first('email')}}
	@endif
</div>

Let's see what changes have been made to the error message if we try to create an account without email input:

Ii I typed in the email that has been taken, tom@bogotobogo.com:

Also, we do not want any valid input disappear and re-type in due to an error. We want to redirect it. Fortunately, there is a way to put the old value back by setting the value attribute to the old one:

<div class="field">
	Email: <input type="text" name="email" value="{{ Input::old('email') }}">
	@if($errors->has('email'))
		{{ $errors->first('email')}}
	@endif
</div>

Now, we want to do the same for 'username' as well. Also, error handling should be done to other fields.

@extends('layout.main')

@section('content')

	<form action="{{ URL::route('account-create-post') }}" method="post">

		<div class="field">
			Email: <input type="text" name="email" value="{{ Input::old('email') }}"> 
			@if($errors->has('email'))
				{{ $errors->first('email')}}
			@endif
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Username: <input type="text" name="username" value="{{ Input::old('username') }}"> 
			@if($errors->has('username'))
				{{ $errors->first('username')}}
			@endif
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Password: <input type="password" name="password"> 
			@if($errors->has('password'))
				{{ $errors->first('password')}}
			@endif
		</div>

		<div class="field">
			Password again: <input type="password" name="password_again"> 
			@if($errors->has('password_again'))
				{{ $errors->first('password_again')}}
			@endif
		</div>

		<input type="submit" value="Create account">
			{{ Form::token() }}
	</form>
@stop

If submitted with all empty fields: