Html form passing to php

Adam · 25 Apr 2006 at 16:01

I have spent a couple of hours wading through tutorials trying to find out how to do the following, they all seem to be far too complicated and there seems to be a million and one ways to do it:

I have 3 fields, FirstName, Surname, and Email. When the user hits submit, the data within the textboxes are passed to php, which in turn sends to my email ([email protected] for instance) with the subject "User Details". The user is then directed to "http://www.domain.com/thankyou.php"

Once this has been sent, I want to recieve an email at the above domain nicely formatted (must be in the correct order):

FirstName: Fred
Surname: Brown
Email: [email protected]

Code:

<?
	$recipient = '[email protected]' ;
	$subject = 'User Details' ;

	
	
	$FirstName = $_REQUEST['FirstName] ;
	$Surname = $_REQUEST['Surname'] ;
	$Email = $_REQUEST['Email'] ;
	


mail( "$recipient","$subject",
	"\n First Name: \n $FirstName",
	"\n Surname: \n $Surname",
	"\n Email:\n $Email", ;
	

header( "Location: http://www.domain.com/thankyou.php" );
?>

Why won't this work? :confused:

MathewS · 25 Apr 2006 at 16:17

have you tried

Code:

<?
	$recipient = '[email protected]' ;
	$subject = 'User Details' ;

	
	
	$FirstName = $_POST['FirstName] ;
	$Surname = $_POST['Surname'] ;
	$Email = $_POST['Email'] ;
	


mail( "$recipient","$subject",
	"\n First Name: \n $FirstName",
	"\n Surname: \n $Surname",
	"\n Email:\n $Email", ;
	

header( "Location: http://www.domain.com/thankyou.php" );
?>

Beansprout · 25 Apr 2006 at 16:21

You're missing a closing bracket on the mail() function for one

MathewS · 25 Apr 2006 at 16:33

Beansprout said:
You're missing a closing bracket on the mail() function for one

I didnt even notice that one, lol, just saw that he was using request, when form data comes from post.

Beansprout · 25 Apr 2006 at 16:41

MathewS said:
I didnt even notice that one, lol, just saw that he was using request, when form data comes from post.

$_REQUEST contains both $_POST and $_GET data

Adam · 25 Apr 2006 at 20:09

Thanks for the advice guys, the above was a basic explanation just to get it working (which it did

), however, I now have more than 5 data items and get the following error:

Warning: mail() expects at most 5 parameters, 19 given in /path/ on line 41

So how do I get around this? :confused:

Edit: Found a really good example here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2849

Beansprout · 25 Apr 2006 at 20:28

Read http://www.php.net/mail and it'll tell you alll about what you need to do

robmiller · 25 Apr 2006 at 20:40

Look at the manual, close strings that you start, do some kind of input validation and cleaning, look at the manual, actually send a message body in the email and not just a subject and an empty message, look at the manual, look at the manual and don't indent like a silly person. Oh, and look at the manual.

Here's a (totally-untested-but-should-be-working) start:

Code:

<?php

function clean( $string ) {
	return preg_replace('#[^a-z0-9 \-_]#i', '', $string);
}

session_start();

$recipient	= '[email protected]';
$subject	= 'User Details';

$firstName	= clean($_REQUEST['firstName']);
$lastName	= clean($_REQUEST['lastName']);
$email		= clean($_REQUEST['email']);
$message	= clean($_REQUEST['message']);

$headers = "From: $firstName $lastName <$email>\r\nReply-To: $firstName $lastName <$email>\r\n";

if( empty($firstName) || empty($surname) || empty($email) )
	die('You need to enter something in all the fields, silly.');

if( $_SESSION['lastMailed'] + 3600 > time() )
	die('Slow down there cowboy, you can only send one message per hour.');

mail($recipient, $subject, $message, $headers);

header('Location: http://www.domain.com/thankyou.php');

?>

Adam · 25 Apr 2006 at 20:46

Having not used PHP much prefer I have found it quite difficult to even do the simplest of things. This is just being used as an example, I don't need to enter validation etc as its a bit OTT.

Thanks anyway, all sorted now. Works flawlessly!

Beansprout · 25 Apr 2006 at 21:09

Adam said:
I don't need to enter validation etc as its a bit OTT.

If you don't do it when you're learning, you'll forget and not get into the habit

It's really, really important to read the manual. http://www.php.net is the single best resource for PHP. You can lookup any function via http://www.php.net/function where function is the function name. Full information, best practices, and a wealth of comments. Sorted

Robdav · 25 Apr 2006 at 22:09

Beansprout said:
If you don't do it when you're learning, you'll forget and not get into the habit

quoted for truth.

When you're learning it's just as important to learn the right "way" of doing things as it is to learn how to do things. Always do the little things right and the big things will take care of themselves.

robmiller · 25 Apr 2006 at 22:44

Adam said:
I don't need to enter validation etc as its a bit OTT.

Link me to your script when it's done please

Ozias · 26 Apr 2006 at 08:32

'I don't need to enter validation etc as its a bit OTT'

With mail forms especially, validation is vital : One of the favourite spammers techniques at the moment is to find contact email forms with no/little form validation on php sites and use these to send out their emails in the hundreds of thousands. Needless to say, this is not going to do your bandwidth/email allocation any good, and is very likely to get your website shut down by your webhost.