How to validate 17 digits in array of VIN numbers from form in php? [closed]

Answer 1

I would take an guess that the value $vin is an array, null or undefined and thus the function call strlen($vin) is returning zero every time.

see documentation for strlen here

Change your code to the following to debug the values:

if(strlen($vin) != 17) {
  echo "VIN is not 17 digits"; 
  echo "VIN is " . strlen($vin) . " digits";
  echo "VIN value is: " . $vin;
} else {
  mail($admin_email, "Auto Quote Request", $email_body);
  echo "Thank you for contacting us!";
}

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edit possible solution number 2:

strlen() returns the number of bytes rather than the number of characters in a string.

As suggested by a comment by chernyshevsky in the strlen docs do the following:

pass the string through utf8_decode() first:

if(strlen(utf8_decode($vin)) != 17) {
  echo "VIN is not 17 digits"; 
  echo "VIN is " . strlen(utf8_decode($vin)) . " digits";
  echo "VIN value is: " . $vin;
} else {
  mail($admin_email, "Auto Quote Request", $email_body);
  echo "Thank you for contacting us!";
}

utf8_decode() converts characters that are not in ISO-8859-1 to '?', which, for the purpose of counting the number of characters will work.