Is FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL pointless if already using FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL?

I am just creating a registration form, and I am looking only to insert valid and safe emails into the database.

Several sites (including w3schools) recommend running FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL before running FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL to be safe; however, this could change the submitted email from an invalid into a valid email, which could not be what the user wanted, for example:

The user has the email address jeff!@gmail.com, but accidentally inserts jeff"@gmail.com.

FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL would remove the " making the email jeff@gmail.com which FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL would say is valid even though it's not the user's actual email address.

To avoid this problem, I plan only to run FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL. (assuming I don't intend to output/process any emails declared invalid)

This will tell me whether or not the email is valid. If it is then there should be no need to pass it through FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL because any illegal/unsafe characters, would've already caused the email to be returned invalid, correct?

I also don't know of any email approved as valid by FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL that could be used for injection/xss due to the fact that white spaces, parentheses () and semicolons would invalidate the email. Or am I wrong?

(note: I wi开发者_如何学运维ll be using prepared statements to insert the data in addition to this, I just wanted to clear this up)

---

Here's how to insert only valid emails.

<?php
$original_email = 'jeff"@gmail.com';

$clean_email = filter_var($original_email,FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

if ($original_email == $clean_email && filter_var($original_email,FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)){
   // now you know the original email was safe to insert.
   // insert into database code go here. 
}

FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL and FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL are both valuable functions and have different uses.

Validation is testing if the email is a valid format. Sanitizing is to clean the bad characters out of the email.

<?php
$email = "test@hostname.com"; 
$clean_email = "";

if (filter_var($email,FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)){
    $clean_email =  filter_var($email,FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
} 

// another implementation by request. Which is the way I would suggest
// using the filters. Clean the content and then make sure it's valid 
// before you use it. 

$email = "test@hostname.com"; 
$clean_email = filter_var($email,FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

if (filter_var($clean_email,FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)){
    // email is valid and ready for use
} else {
    // email is invalid and should be rejected
}

PHP is open source, so these questions are easily answered by just using it.

Source for FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL:

/* {{{ php_filter_email */
#define SAFE        "$-_.+"
#define EXTRA       "!*'(),"
#define NATIONAL    "{}|\\^~[]`"
#define PUNCTUATION "<>#%\""
#define RESERVED    ";/?:@&="

void php_filter_email(PHP_INPUT_FILTER_PARAM_DECL)
{
    /* Check section 6 of rfc 822 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html */
    const unsigned char allowed_list[] = LOWALPHA HIALPHA DIGIT "!#$%&'*+-=?^_`{|}~@.[]";
    filter_map     map;

    filter_map_init(&map);
    filter_map_update(&map, 1, allowed_list);
    filter_map_apply(value, &map);
}    

Source for FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL:

void php_filter_validate_email(PHP_INPUT_FILTER_PARAM_DECL) /* {{{ */
{
const char regexp[] = "/^(?!(?:(?:\\x22?\\x5C[\\x00-\\x7E]\\x22?)|(?:\\x22?[^\\x5C\\x22]\\x22?)){255,})(?!(?:(?:\\x22?\\x5C[\\x00-\\x7E]\\x22?)|(?:\\x22?[^\\x5C\\x22]\\x22?)){65,}@)(?:(?:[\\x21\\x23-\\x27\\x2A\\x2B\\x2D\\x2F-\\x39\\x3D\\x3F\\x5E-\\x7E]+)|(?:\\x22(?:[\\x01-\\x08\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x1F\\x21\\x23-\\x5B\\x5D-\\x7F]|(?:\\x5C[\\x00-\\x7F]))*\\x22))(?:\\.(?:(?:[\\x21\\x23-\\x27\\x2A\\x2B\\x2D\\x2F-\\x39\\x3D\\x3F\\x5E-\\x7E]+)|(?:\\x22(?:[\\x01-\\x08\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x1F\\x21\\x23-\\x5B\\x5D-\\x7F]|(?:\\x5C[\\x00-\\x7F]))*\\x22)))*@(?:(?:(?!.*[^.]{64,})(?:(?:(?:xn--)?[a-z0-9]+(?:-+[a-z0-9]+)*\\.){1,126}){1,}(?:(?:[a-z][a-z0-9]*)|(?:(?:xn--)[a-z0-9]+))(?:-+[a-z0-9]+)*)|(?:\\[(?:(?:IPv6:(?:(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){7})|(?:(?!(?:.*[a-f0-9][:\\]]){7,})(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,5})?::(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,5})?)))|(?:(?:IPv6:(?:(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){5}:)|(?:(?!(?:.*[a-f0-9]:){5,})(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,3})?::(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,3}:)?)))?(?:(?:25[0-5])|(?:2[0-4][0-9])|(?:1[0-9]{2})|(?:[1-9]?[0-9]))(?:\\.(?:(?:25[0-5])|(?:2[0-4][0-9])|(?:1[0-9]{2})|(?:[1-9]?[0-9]))){3}))\\]))$/iD";

pcre       *re = NULL;
pcre_extra *pcre_extra = NULL;
int preg_options = 0;
int         ovector[150]; /* Needs to be a multiple of 3 */
int         matches;


/* The maximum length of an e-mail address is 320 octets, per RFC 2821. */
if (Z_STRLEN_P(value) > 320) {
    RETURN_VALIDATION_FAILED
}

re = pcre_get_compiled_regex((char *)regexp, &pcre_extra, &preg_options TSRMLS_CC);
if (!re) {
    RETURN_VALIDATION_FAILED
}
matches = pcre_exec(re, NULL, Z_STRVAL_P(value), Z_STRLEN_P(value), 0, 0, ovector, 3);

/* 0 means that the vector is too small to hold all the captured substring offsets */
if (matches < 0) {
    RETURN_VALIDATION_FAILED
}

}

---

I read the same article and thought the same thing: Simply changing an invalid variable is not good enough. We need to actually tell the user that there was a problem, instead of just ignoring it. The solution, I think, is to compare the original to the sanitized version. I.e. to use the w3schools example, just add:

$cleanfield = filter_var($field, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

if ($cleanfield != $field){
    return FALSE;
}

---

The "proper" way of doing this is asking for the user's email two times (which is common/good practice). But to answer your question, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL is not pointless. It's a filter that sanitizes emails and it does its job well.

You need to understand that a filter that validates either returns true or false whereas a filter that sanitizes actually modifies the given variable. The two do not serve the same purpose.

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always use validation filters early at moment of input, while sanitization is better used late in output as it clean the value before it reach the user