Zvonko Biškup on Jul 06, 2010 Basics

Username availability check using PHP and jQuery

10 comments

Most common thing clients ask me to implement is to check if username that the user is trying to use during registration process is already taken.

This sounds complicated, but it really is not. jQuery will help us to achieve this functionality using very few lines of code.

I prefer AJAX approach as it is cool and users love it, as they know that username is free or taken even before they submit the actual form.

So let us create a table in mySQL to hold some user data:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`username` varchar(150) NOT NULL,
`email` varchar(100) NOT NULL',
`pass` varchar(100)  NOT NULL',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
)

This is small and typical users table. Now let’s create a small form for our example:

<form action="do_check.php" method="post"> 
    <input id="username_box" class="search_box" name="username" type="text" />
    <input id="sub" type="submit" value="Check" />
</form>

In real life application this would be a bigger form, but I want to concentrate only on important things and that is username field. As you noticed, I already added a div with id of “results” which will hold our result data.

Now some jQuery magic:

$(function() {
$("#sub").click(function() {
    // getting the value that user typed
    var checkString    = $("#username_box").val();
    // forming the queryString
    var data            = 'user='+ checkString;

    // if checkString is not empty
    if(checkString) {
        // ajax call
        $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "do_check.php",
            data: data,
            beforeSend: function(html) { // this happen before actual call
                $("#results").html('');
            },
            success: function(html){ // this happen after we get result
                $("#results").show();
                $("#results").append(html);
            }
        });
}
return false;
});
});

This jQuery code is making an AJAX call to PHP file do_check.php which is actually checking for username availability and return info about it. And here it is:

//if we got something through $_POST
if (isset($_POST['user'])) {
    // here you would normally include some database connection
    include('db.php');
    $db = new db();
    // never trust what user wrote! We must ALWAYS sanitize user input
    $username = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['user']);
    // build your query to the database
    $sql = "SELECT count(*) as num FROM users WHERE username = " . $username;
    // get results
    $row = $db->select_single($sql);
    if($row['num'] == 0) {
        echo 'Username <em>'.$username.'</em> is available!';
    } else {
        echo 'Username <em>'.$username.'</em> is already taken!';
    }
}

Basically, code is checking in the database how many rows are in the users table with the username that we typed. If there are no such rows, the username is available.

The demo is available here

To get even more excellent content, you can follow me on Twitter.

10 Responses to “Username availability check using PHP and jQuery”

Pallav says:
October 26, 2010 at 09:30

Sir i need a small module in php in which when user first register in the site , after submitting the form one folder automatically get created in that user table with same username that is if i register in the site say palti then after submitting the form palti’s folder must be there in the admin panel.

now what i want to do with this module is whenever the user want to upload any photographs for his relatives any where in the world all his uploaded pics will be available in his folder .
kavish says:
April 11, 2011 at 11:13

can you send me the source code? i having problem with the code you posted.

Thanks
roy says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:42

sir How to make the same checking without pressing button “check”
- Zvonko says:
  August 24, 2011 at 13:40
  
  To do the same without pressing the button “check” you would have to use keyup event handler instead of click.
  
  And the events caught should be on input field.
  
  So instead of
  
  $("#sub").click(function() {
  
  you should use
  
  $("#username_box").keyup(function() {
  
  Downside of this is that with every key pressed inside username field, you are checking the database if that username exists.
Developer says:
September 2, 2011 at 06:43

Thanks Zvonko, its too easy to do. and also easily i can connect it with database. Thanks a lot

10 Responses to “Username availability check using PHP and jQuery”

Trackbacks/Pingbacks