Checking string length, max and minimum

Question

Is there a function to check if a string is too long or too short, I normally end up writing something like this in several places:

if (strlen($input) < 12)
{
   echo "Input is too short, minimum is 12 characters (20 max).";
}
elseif(strlen($input) > 20)
{
   echo "Input is too long, maximum is 20 characters.";
}

I know you can easily write one but is there one built into PHP?

I normally collect errors as I validate input, so the above code would be written:

$errors = array();

    if (strlen($input) < 12)
    {
       $errors['field_name'] = "Field Name is too short, minimum is 12 characters (20 max).";
    }
    elseif(strlen($input) > 20)
    {
       $errors['field_name'] = "Field Name is too long, maximum is 20 characters.";
    }

How can that be made into a function ^?

Answer 1

I guess you can make a function like this:

function validStrLen($str, $min, $max){
    $len = strlen($str);
    if($len < $min){
        return "Field Name is too short, minimum is $min characters ($max max)";
    }
    elseif($len > $max){
        return "Field Name is too long, maximum is $max characters ($min min).";
    }
    return TRUE;
}

Then you can do something like this:

$errors['field_name'] = validStrLen($field, 12, 20);