Zend Form - Existing Email Address checking in Database

In this tutorial, we are going to discuss about How to check the existing email address in database in zend form. If you are creating a user registration form, you will either want to check if a username or an email address is already exist in the database. This is very easy to do, assuming you are familiar with using Zend_Form:

$validator = new Zend_Validate_Db_NoRecordExists('user', 'email'); // user is the table name, and email is the column
    $validator->setMessage("Error: The e-mail has already been registered"); // set your own error message
    $this->addElement('text', 'email', array(
       'label' => 'E-mail Address',
       'required' => true,
       'filters' => array('StringTrim'),
       'validators' => array(
           'EmailAddress',
           $validator
       )
));

That's all.

NOTE: This might be obvious but you cannot chain the setMessage(…) function directly to the end of new Zend_Validate_Db_NoRecordExists('user', 'email');

If you are not familiar Zend_Form, here's a full example:

/* application/forms/Register.php */
class Default_Form_Register extends Zend_Form {
public function init($options = null) {
$this->setMethod('post');
$this->addElement('text', 'firstName', array(
'label' => 'First Name',
'required' => true,
'filters' => array('StringTrim'),
'validators' => array(
array('validator' => 'StringLength', 'options' => array(1, 255))
)
));
$this->addElement('text', 'lastName', array(
'label' => 'Last Name',
'required' => true,
'filters' => array('StringTrim'),
'validators' => array(
array('validator' => 'StringLength', 'options' => array(1, 255))
)
));

        $validator = new Zend_Validate_Db_NoRecordExists('user', 'email');
$validator->setMessage("Error: The e-mail has already been registered");
$this->addElement('text', 'email', array(
'label' => 'E-mail Address',
'required' => true,
'filters' => array('StringTrim'),
'validators' => array(
'EmailAddress',
$validator
)
));

$password = $this->addElement('password', 'password', array(
'filters' => array('StringTrim'),
'validators' => array(
array('StringLength', false, array(8, 20)),
),
'required' => true,
'label' => 'Password',
'id' => 'password'
));

$register = $this->addElement('submit', 'register', array(
'required' => false,
'ignore' => true,
'label' => 'Register Now',
));
}