Need php form to name which required fields have not been filled out.

Question

My php form has required fields, but the message does not let the user know which field hasn't been entered. How can I do this?

//if statement to check required fields
if ($name && $phone && $email && && $address && $city && $state && $zip && $month && $date && $year && $contact)...
    //if some required fields were not filled out
    echo "Please make sure you fill in all required fields<br>Click <a href=\"javascript:history.back(1)\">here</a> to return to our form.";
}

Answer 1

Here is a trivial example...

// An array of required fields, these fields must not be empty
$requiredFields = array('name', 'email');  

// Iterate through required fields
foreach ($requiredFields as $fieldName)
{
    // Does this field have a value?
    if (empty($_REQUEST[$fieldName]))
    {
        echo 'rawr! go back and fill out ' . $fieldName . "<br>\n";
    }
}    

Answer 2

It looks like each of those are boolean values; I assume you set them earlier when checking each value individually. Instead of using a single echo at the end, I would initialize a $message variable at the beginning, and put all error messages there. At the end, just echo $message'.

Answer 3

Just tedious if/else clauses. You could use a validation framework to elemiate alot of this.

if (empty($name))
   echo "Name is not filled out";
if(empty($phone))
   echo "Phone is not filled out";

If you want to get fancy this would work

foreach (array("name","phone") as $var)
{
   if (empty($$name))
      echo "$var is not filled out";
}