How To Get and Sanitize Form Data In Joomla

Forms are extensively used in Joomla, both in administration and front-end. You can get data after form submission using JInput. It also provides various ways to filter and sanitise your input data.

Step 1

To use JInput, first create the object by using this code:

$jinput = JFactory::getApplication()->input;

Step 2

Then, to get a value from JInput, use:

$var_name = $jinput->get('variable_name', 'default_value', 'filter');

variable_name is the name given in field declaration in the XML file. The filter defaults to cmd.

Available Filters

You can use any of the following filters:

INT: Only use the first integer value
UINT: Only use the first integer value, converts integer value to absolute
FLOAT: Only use the first floating point value
BOOLEAN:
WORD: Only allow characters a-z, and underscores
ALNUM: Allow a-z and 0-9 only
CMD: Allow a-z, 0-9, underscore, dot, dash. Also remove leading dots from result
BASE64: Allow a-z, 0-9, slash, plus, equals
STRING: Converts the input to a plain text string; strips all tags / attributes
HTML: Converts the input to a string; strips all HTML tags / attributes
ARRAY: Attempts to convert the input to an array
PATH: Converts the input into a string and validates it as a path
RAW: The raw input. No sanitation provided.
USERNAME: Strips all invalid username characters

How to Get Joomla Component, View and Item ID

You can get the name of the Joomla component and item id of the current page in the similar way.

$input = JFactory::getApplication()->input;

 $option = $input->get('option');
 $view = $input->get('view');
 $id = $input->getInt('id');
 $catid = $params->get('catid');

For example, you can check whether the current page is from content component.

if ($option === 'com_content')
{
 switch ($view)
 {
  case 'category' :
   $id = $input->getInt('id');
   break;
  case 'categories' :
   $id = $input->getInt('id');
   break;
  case 'article' :
   $id = $input->getInt('catid');
 }
}