[SOLVED] How to prevent duplicate usernames when people register?

Issue

I have been making a login/register system and I am drawing close to finishing my register portion of code. The only problem I am running into is how to make it so that users cannot register with duplicated usernames. I want it to work so that my database won’t accept the information, and it will tell the user about the error.

My PHP

<?php

include 'database_connection.php';
if (isset($_POST['formsubmitted'])) {
    $error = array(); //Declare An Array to store any error message
if (empty($_POST['name'])) {//if no name has been supplied
    $error[] = 'Please Enter a name '; //add to array "error"
} else {
    $name = $_POST['name']; //else assign it a variable
}

    if (empty($_POST['e-mail'])) {
        $error[] = 'Please Enter your Email ';
    } else {
        if (preg_match("/^([a-zA-Z0-9])+([a-zA-Z0-9\._-])*@([a-zA-Z0-9_-])+([a-zA-Z0-9\._-]+)+$/", $_POST['e-mail'])) {
            //regular expression for email validation
            $Email = $_POST['e-mail'];
        } else {
            $error[] = 'Your EMail Address is invalid  ';
        }
    }

    if (empty($_POST['Password'])) {
        $error[] = 'Please Enter Your Password ';
    } else {
        $Password = $_POST['Password'];
    }

    if (empty($error)) {
        //send to Database if there's no error '
    }
}

Solution

You can do it like this when the user post the username for example and click submit you can write this code or add it to your code with your modification:

<?php

// make sure the error reporting is enabled!
mysqli_report(MYSQLI_REPORT_ERROR | MYSQLI_REPORT_STRICT);
$mysqli = new mysqli('localhost', 'user', 'password', 'test');
$mysqli->set_charset('utf8mb4');

$username = $_POST['username'];
$stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM table_name where username=?");
$stmt->execute([$username]);
$result = $stmt->get_result();
$user = $result->fetch_assoc();
if ($user) {
    echo "user exists";
} else {
    echo "user does not exists";
}

When you create the column of the user you can make it unique, for example create table users(username varchar(350) not null unique).

Answered By – Walid Naceri

Answer Checked By – Willingham (BugsFixing Volunteer)