[php] How to validate an Email in PHP?

How can I validate the input value is a valid email address using php5. Now I am using this code

function isValidEmail($email){ 
     $pattern = "^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$"; 

     if (eregi($pattern, $email)){ 
        return true; 
     } 
     else { 
        return false; 
     }    
} 

but it shows deprecated error. How can I fix this issue. Please help me.

This is old post but I will share one my solution because noone mention here one problem before.

New email address can contain UTF-8 characters or special domain names like .live, .news etc.

Also I find that some email address can be on Cyrilic and on all cases standard regex or filter_var() will fail.

That's why I made an solution for it:

function valid_email($email) 
{
    if(is_array($email) || is_numeric($email) || is_bool($email) || is_float($email) || is_file($email) || is_dir($email) || is_int($email))
        return false;
    else
    {
        $email=trim(strtolower($email));
        if(filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)!==false) return $email;
        else
        {
            $pattern = '/^(?!(?:(?:\\x22?\\x5C[\\x00-\\x7E]\\x22?)|(?:\\x22?[^\\x5C\\x22]\\x22?)){255,})(?!(?:(?:\\x22?\\x5C[\\x00-\\x7E]\\x22?)|(?:\\x22?[^\\x5C\\x22]\\x22?)){65,}@)(?:(?:[\\x21\\x23-\\x27\\x2A\\x2B\\x2D\\x2F-\\x39\\x3D\\x3F\\x5E-\\x7E]+)|(?:\\x22(?:[\\x01-\\x08\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x1F\\x21\\x23-\\x5B\\x5D-\\x7F]|(?:\\x5C[\\x00-\\x7F]))*\\x22))(?:\\.(?:(?:[\\x21\\x23-\\x27\\x2A\\x2B\\x2D\\x2F-\\x39\\x3D\\x3F\\x5E-\\x7E]+)|(?:\\x22(?:[\\x01-\\x08\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x1F\\x21\\x23-\\x5B\\x5D-\\x7F]|(?:\\x5C[\\x00-\\x7F]))*\\x22)))*@(?:(?:(?!.*[^.]{64,})(?:(?:(?:xn--)?[a-z0-9]+(?:-+[a-z0-9]+)*\\.){1,126}){1,}(?:(?:[a-z][a-z0-9]*)|(?:(?:xn--)[a-z0-9]+))(?:-+[a-z0-9]+)*)|(?:\\[(?:(?:IPv6:(?:(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){7})|(?:(?!(?:.*[a-f0-9][:\\]]){7,})(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,5})?::(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,5})?)))|(?:(?:IPv6:(?:(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){5}:)|(?:(?!(?:.*[a-f0-9]:){5,})(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,3})?::(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,3}:)?)))?(?:(?:25[0-5])|(?:2[0-4][0-9])|(?:1[0-9]{2})|(?:[1-9]?[0-9]))(?:\\.(?:(?:25[0-5])|(?:2[0-4][0-9])|(?:1[0-9]{2})|(?:[1-9]?[0-9]))){3}))\\]))$/iD';
            return (preg_match($pattern, $email) === 1) ? $email : false;
        }
    }
}

This function work perfectly for all cases and email formats.

I always use this:

function validEmail($email){
    // First, we check that there's one @ symbol, and that the lengths are right
    if (!preg_match("/^[^@]{1,64}@[^@]{1,255}$/", $email)) {
        // Email invalid because wrong number of characters in one section, or wrong number of @ symbols.
        return false;
    }
    // Split it into sections to make life easier
    $email_array = explode("@", $email);
    $local_array = explode(".", $email_array[0]);
    for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($local_array); $i++) {
        if (!preg_match("/^(([A-Za-z0-9!#$%&'*+\/=?^_`{|}~-][A-Za-z0-9!#$%&'*+\/=?^_`{|}~\.-]{0,63})|(\"[^(\\|\")]{0,62}\"))$/", $local_array[$i])) {
            return false;
        }
    }
    if (!preg_match("/^\[?[0-9\.]+\]?$/", $email_array[1])) { // Check if domain is IP. If not, it should be valid domain name
        $domain_array = explode(".", $email_array[1]);
        if (sizeof($domain_array) < 2) {
            return false; // Not enough parts to domain
        }
        for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($domain_array); $i++) {
            if (!preg_match("/^(([A-Za-z0-9][A-Za-z0-9-]{0,61}[A-Za-z0-9])|([A-Za-z0-9]+))$/", $domain_array[$i])) {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }

    return true;
}

Stay away from regex and filter_var() solutions for validating email. See this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42037557/953833

User data is very important for a good developer, so don't ask again and again for same data, use some logic to correct some basic error in data.

Before validation of Email: First you have to remove all illegal characters from email.

//This will Remove all illegal characters from email
$email = filter_var($email, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

after that validate your email address using this filter_var() function.

filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) // To Validate the email

For e.g.

<?php
$email = "[email protected]";

// Remove all illegal characters from email
$email = filter_var($email, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

// Validate email
if (filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    echo $email." is a valid email address";
} else {
    echo $email." is not a valid email address";
}
?>

See the notes at http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ereg.php:

Note:

As of PHP 5.3.0, the regex extension is deprecated in favor of the PCRE extension. Calling this function will issue an E_DEPRECATED notice. See the list of differences for help on converting to PCRE.

Note:

preg_match(), which uses a Perl-compatible regular expression syntax, is often a faster alternative to ereg().

Use:

• or "filter_var" from http://php.net/manual/en/function.filter-var.php

var_dump(filter_var('[email protected]', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL));

• or "EmailValidator" from https://github.com/egulias/EmailValidator

$validator = new EmailValidator();
$multipleValidations = new MultipleValidationWithAnd([
    new RFCValidation(),
    new DNSCheckValidation()
]);
$validator->isValid("[email protected]", $multipleValidations); //true