After seeing Shaun’s Fixing the $_FILES superglobal I found myself browsing around in the inc.functions.php file I’ve been using and maintaining project by project. To my own surprise I noticed that the file itself has grown over time and kind of is stuffed with some darn handy functions! Time to spread them out, starting with this one right here: fixGmail();
Whilst coding Iedereenleeftmee back in May fixGmail() was created to rework gmail.com addresses. Reason for reworking all those addresses was the fact that Iedereenleeftmee was/is based upon unique e-mail addresses. But what is there to rework on an e-mail address? And why only GMail?
As one might know, gmail accounts are in and have some bugs the Google team would like to call features:
- Period Stuffing
- Plussing
Period Stuffing
Period Stuffing – as I like to call it – implies that periods can be added anywhere in the username without affecting it at all
For example think of me having bram@gmail.com (which I don’t!). The first "feature" implies that all of the following e-mail addresses will arrive to bram@gmail.com:
- b.ram@gmail.com
- br.am@gmail.com
- bra.m@gmail.com
- b.r.am@gmail.com
- …
- Heck, even "b……ram@gmail.com" would arrive!
As you can see this was an issue with Iedereenleeftmee since some handy dudes would just invite themselves 9 times (with each having a period on a different spot), thus receiving 10 free entrance tickets to an amusement park of choice.
Plussing
Plussing can be taken quite literally: use a plus sign (+) to add an extra parameter/piece of text to to your e-mail address
Take that bram@gmail.com account again … what if I had to subscribe to some forum leaving behind my e-mail address. How would I ever possibly know if they sold/gave my e-mailaddy to someone else? This is where PA kicks in: one can actually enter bram+thatgamesforum@gmail.com and the mails would still arriving! Quite handy imo (so you can really track who’s selling what and/or even filter some stuff), yet not handy for the webdeveloper who wants users to be unique by their e-mailaddress…
The PHP Code
The PHP Code is quite simple and laid upon thee here for grabbing:
// Bramus! pwnge! : fixes gmail.com mail addresses (http://www.bram.us/)
function fixGmail($emailaddy) {
// $emailaddy is an '@gmail.com'-address
if (eregi('@gmail.com', $emailaddy)) {
// make lowercase, strip out periods (but fix gmailcom)
$emailaddy = str_replace("@gmailcom","@gmail.com",str_replace(".", "", strtolower($emailaddy)));
// a plus sign is found in $emailaddy
if (eregi('\+', $emailaddy)) {
// grab the substring from the start up to the first plus sign and add @gmail.com
$emailaddy = substr($emailaddy,0, strpos($emailaddy,"+"))."@gmail.com";
}
}
// now return it
return $emailaddy;
}
Successfully tested with a series of e-mail addresses, all resulting bram@gmail.com
- bram@gmail.com
- b.r.am@gmail.com
- b.r…..am@gmail.com
- bram+newsgroups@gmail.com
- bram+forum@gmail.com
- b.ram+extra@gmail.com
- b.r.am+extra@gmail.com
- b.ram+ex..tra@gmail.com
- b.r.am+ex+t.ra@gmail.com
That’s it for now…
Stay tuned for more PHP Geekery!
B!
(post scriptum: Icon companioning this post is a Willow Tree, influenced by Fat Freddy’s Drop!)
Bram.us is the technical/geeky weblog of Bram Van Damme (nicknamed Bramus!), a 28 year old geezer raised in Deinze and living in
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I think that sending @googlemail.com will also work.