Codeigniter 4 Form Validation Tutorial with Example

CodeIgniter 4 form validation example; In this tutorial guide, you will learn how to create bootstrap forms and validate form data on the server side in CodeIgniter 4 apps.

Basically, validation happens on both sides like server-side and client-side, On the server-side that you need to define the validation rules.

In this Codeigniter 4 Bootstrap form validation example will use the form validation library of Codeigniter that is validate form data on server side.

How to Validate Form Data in CodeIgniter 4 Apps

Follow the below steps and validate form data on server-side in CodeIgniter 4 framework:

Step 1: Setup Codeigniter Project
Step 2: Basic Configurations
Step 3: Create Database With Table
Step 4: Setup Database Credentials
Step 5: Create Model and Controller
Step 6: Create Views
Step 7: Start Development server

Step 1: Setup Codeigniter Project

In this step, we will download the latest version of Codeigniter 4, Go to this link https://codeigniter.com/download Download Codeigniter 4 fresh new setup and unzip the setup in your local system xampp/htdocs/ . And change the download folder name “demo”

Step 2: Basic Configurations

Next, we will set some basic configuration on the app/config/app.php file, so let’s go to application/config/config.php and open this file on text editor.

Set Base URL like this

public $baseURL = 'http://localhost:8080';
To
public $baseURL = 'http://localhost/demo/';

Step 3: Create Database With Table

In this step, we need to create a database name demo, so let’s open your PHPMyAdmin and create the database with the name demo. After successfully create a database, you can use the below SQL query for creating a table in your database.

CREATE TABLE contacts (
    id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT COMMENT 'Primary Key',
    name varchar(100) NOT NULL COMMENT 'Name',
    email varchar(255) NOT NULL COMMENT 'Email Address',
    message varchar(250) NOT NULL COMMENT 'Message',
    created_at varchar(20) NOT NULL COMMENT 'Created date',
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
  ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT='demo table' AUTO_INCREMENT=1;

Step 4: Setup Database Credentials

In this step, we need to connect our project to the database. we need to go app/Config/Database.php and open database.php file in text editor. After opening the file in a text editor, We need to set up database credentials in this file like below.

	public $default = [
		'DSN'      => '',
		'hostname' => 'localhost',
		'username' => 'root',
		'password' => '',
		'database' => 'demo',
		'DBDriver' => 'MySQLi',
		'DBPrefix' => '',
		'pConnect' => false,
		'DBDebug'  => (ENVIRONMENT !== 'production'),
		'cacheOn'  => false,
		'cacheDir' => '',
		'charset'  => 'utf8',
		'DBCollat' => 'utf8_general_ci',
		'swapPre'  => '',
		'encrypt'  => false,
		'compress' => false,
		'strictOn' => false,
		'failover' => [],
		'port'     => 3306,
	];

Step 5: Create Model and Controller

So go to app/Models/ and create here one model. And you need to create one model name contactModel.php and update the following code into your contactModel.php file:

<?php namespace App\Models;
use CodeIgniter\Database\ConnectionInterface;
use CodeIgniter\Model;

class ContactModel extends Model
{
    protected $table = 'contacts';

    protected $allowedFields = ['name', 'email', 'message'];
}

Create Controller

Now Go to app/Controllers and create a controller name Contact.php. In this controller, we will create some method/function. We will build some of the methods like :

Index() – This is used to display contact us form.
create() – This is used to validate form data server-side and store into mysql database.

<?php namespace App\Controllers;

use CodeIgniter\Controller;
use App\Models\ContactModel;

class Contact extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {    
         return view('contact');
    }

    public function create()
    {  

	helper(['form', 'url']);
        
        $val = $this->validate([
	        'name' => 'required',
	        'email' => 'required',
	        'message'  => 'required',
	    ]);

	    $model = new ContactModel();

	    if (!$val)
	    {

	        echo view('contact', [
	               'validation' => $this->validator
	        ]);

	    }
	    else
	    { 
	  
	        $model->save([
	            'name' => $this->request->getVar('name'),
	            'email'  => $this->request->getVar('email'),
	            'message'  => $this->request->getVar('message'),
	        ]);

	        echo view('success');
	    }
	}
}

Step 6: Create Views

Now we need to create contact.php, go to application/views/ folder and create contact.php file. and update the following HTML into your files:.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>Codeigniter 4 Form Validation Example</title>
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/css/bootstrap.min.css">
</head>
<body>
 <div class="container">
    <br>
    <?= \Config\Services::validation()->listErrors(); ?>

    <div class="row">
      <div class="col-md-9">
        <form action="<?php echo base_url('public/index.php/contact/create') ?>" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8">

          <div class="form-group">
            <label for="formGroupExampleInput">Name</label>
            <input type="text" name="name" class="form-control" id="formGroupExampleInput" placeholder="Please enter name">
            
          </div> 

          <div class="form-group">
            <label for="email">Email Id</label>
            <input type="text" name="email" class="form-control" id="email" placeholder="Please enter email id">
            
          </div>   

          <div class="form-group">
            <label for="message">Message</label>
            <textarea name="message" class="form-control"></textarea>
            
          </div>

          <div class="form-group">
           <button type="submit" id="send_form" class="btn btn-success">Submit</button>
          </div>
        </form>
      </div>

    </div>
 
</div>
</body>
</html>

This below line display error messages on your web page:

<?= \Config\Services::validation()->listErrors(); ?>

Now we need to create success.php file, so go to application/views/ and create success.php file. And put the below code here.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title> Codeigniter 4 Form Success </title>
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/css/bootstrap.min.css">
</head>
<body>
	<div class="container mt-5">
	 <h1 class="text-center"> Thank You for contact us</h1>
	</div>
</body>
</html>

Step 7: Start Development server

For start development server, Go to the browser and hit below the URL.

http://localhost/demo/public/index.php/contact

Conclusion

In this Codeigniter 4 Bootstrap form validation tutorial, We have successfully validated form data on the server-side. After successfully validate data on the server-side, we send it to users on the success page.