Website Ping

[Steven]

I recently noticed that the Commentics demo was failing to check whether entered websites existed. Some people have been entering made up websites in the website field and the script was allowing this. Upon further inspection, I found that the check was working correctly on localhost but not online. I have come up with a different solution which is working both on localhost and online.

Replace the validate_website() function in comments/includes/functions/processor.php with this:

PHP Code:

function validate_website ($website) { //checks whether website was valid

    global $validate_website_ping; //globalise variables
    
    $website_valid = true; //initialise flag as true
    
    if (!preg_match('/http:\/\/([a-z0-9]{2,}\-?\.[a-z]{2,3})(\.?[a-z]{2,3})?/i', $website)) { //if the submitted website address does not validate
        $website_valid = false; //set flag as false
    }

    if ($validate_website_ping) { //if website should be pinged
    
        $headers = @get_headers($website);
        
        $check = is_array($headers) ? preg_match('/^HTTP\\/\\d+\\.\\d+\\s+2\\d\\d\\s+.*$/',$headers[0]) : false;
        
        if (!$check) {
            $website_valid = false; //set flag as false
        }
        
    } //end of if-website-should-be-pinged

    if (!$website_valid) { //if invalid website was entered
        error(ERROR_MESSAGE_INVALID_WEBSITE); //reject user for invalid website address
    }
    
} //end of validate-website function 


This fix will be included in Commentics v1.2.