Need help with PHP contact form

PHP
1

Hi guys,

I’ve made a PHP contact form for my site and need help with a couple of things…

The form action links an external PHP script (scripts/contact-form-script.php) but is there a way I can have it so the PHP script for the form is contained within the same PHP file as my contact form (contact.php)?

I tried just putting the form code at the top of contact.php but the browser automatically reads the anti-spam re-direct, so maybe that needs revising too?

The second thing is, how can I make the Name, Email and Message fields mandatory? So if a user tries to submit the form and hasn’t filled in one of the required fields and clicks submit, contact.php reloads with a message at the top of the form saying something like ‘Complete the required fields’ and highlights the relevant field with a red border?

Here’s the code for contact.php:

<form action="http://www.mydomain.com/scripts/contact-form-script.php" method="post" name="contact" id="contact">
<p><strong>Name:*</strong><br />
<input name="name" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
<p><strong>E-mail:*</strong><br />
<input name="email" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
<p><strong>Telephone:</strong><br />
<input name="telephone" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
<p><strong>Company:</strong><br />
<input name="company" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
<p><strong>Address:</strong><br />
<input name="address1" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
<p><input name="address2" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
<p><strong>Town:</strong><br />
<input name="town" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
<p><strong>County:</strong><br />
<input name="county" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
p><strong>Postcode:</strong><br />
<input name="postcode" type="text" class="ctextField" /></p>
<p><strong>Message:*</strong><br />
<textarea name="message" cols="55" rows="8" class="ctextField"></textarea></p>
<p><input name="submit" value="SEND MESSAGE" class="submitButton" type="submit" /><div style="visibility:hidden; width:1px; height:1px"><input name="url" type="text" size="45" id="url" /></div></p>
</form>

And this is the PHP I’m using to submit the form data for contact-form-script.php:

<?php



$headers .= "Reply-To: " . $_POST["email"] . "\\r\
";

$to = "me@mydomain.com";
$subject = "Contact from website";

$message = $headers;
$message .= "Name: " . $_POST["name"] . "\\r\
";
$message .= "E-mail: " . $_POST["email"] . "\\r\
";




        $message= '


            <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" border="0" width="500">
            <tr>
                <td colspan="2"></td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td width="154" style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>Name</strong></td>
              <td width="314" style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$name.'</td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>E-mail address:</strong></td>
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$email.'</td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>Telephone number:</strong></td>
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$telephone.'</td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>Company:</strong></td>
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$company.'</td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>Address</strong></td>
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$address1.'</td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td></td>
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$address2.'</td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>Town</strong></td>
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$town.'</td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>County</strong></td>
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$county.'</td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>Postcode</strong></td>
              <td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$postcode.'</td>
            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
                <td colspan="2" style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;"><strong>Message</strong></td>
            </tr>
            <tr bgcolor="#eeeeee">
                <td colspan="2" style="font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;">'.$message.'</td>
            </tr>

            <tr><td colspan="2" style="padding:0px;"><img src="images/whitespace.gif" alt="" width="100%" height="1" /></td></tr>
         </table>




';







$url = stripslashes($_POST["url"]);
if (!empty($url)) {
header( 'Location: http://www.go-away-spam-robots.com' );
exit();
}

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

header( 'Location: http://www.mydomain.com/sent.php' ) ;
?>

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you and I hope to hear from you!

SM

2

Essentially:


<?php

if( isset($_POST['formsent']) ){

var_dump( $_POST );

if( empty($_POST[''name]) ) $error['name'] = true ;
// do your other stuff here

}
?>

<form action=""  method="POST" name="contact" id="contact">
<p><strong>Name:*</strong><br />
<input name="name" type="text" class="ctextField" /> <?php if ($error['name']) echo " *** Please add your name"?></p>
<input type = hidden name="formsent" value=1>
<input type="submit">
</form>

When you do this for your entire form though, you might think of better ways of doing it and making it less error prone (eg using arrays).

3

Hi Cups,

That’s awesome, thank you for that!

I added the PHP at the top of my form and Dreamweaver seemed to display a syntax error for:

if( empty($_POST[''name]) ) $error['name'] = true ;

I tried a couple of things, and changed it to…

if( empty($_POST['name']) ) $error['name'] = true ;

…which seemed to be ok.

But when you hit Submit, the form still goes through and just leaves the field blank on the email I get sent.

This is what my PHP looks like now:



<?php

if( isset($_POST['formsent']) ){

var_dump( $_POST );

if( empty($_POST['name']) ) $error['name'] = true ;
if( empty($_POST['email']) ) $error['email'] = true ;
if( empty($_POST['message']) ) $error['message'] = true ;
// do your other stuff here

}



if (array_key_exists('submit', $_POST)) {

    $name = $_POST['name'];

    $email = $_POST['email'];

    $telephone = $_POST['telephone'];

    $company = $_POST['company'];

    $address1 = $_POST['address1'];

    $address2 = $_POST['address2'];

    $town = $_POST['town'];

    $county = $_POST['county'];

    $postcode = $_POST['postcode'];

    $formMessage = $_POST['message'];





$headers .= "Reply-To: " . $_POST["email"] . "\\r\
";



$to = "me@mydomain.com";

$subject = "Contact from website";



$message = $headers;

$message .= "Name: " . $_POST["name"] . "\\r\
";

$message .= "E-mail: " . $_POST["email"] . "\\r\
";



$headers  = "MIME-Version: 1.0\\r\
";

$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\\r\
";









        $message= "

<table cellspacing='0' cellpadding='8' border='0' width='500'>

            <tr>

                <td colspan='2'></td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td width='154' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>Name</strong></td>

              <td width='314' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$name."</td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>E-mail address:</strong></td>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$email."</td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>Telephone number:</strong></td>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$telephone."</td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>Company:</strong></td>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$company."</td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>Address</strong></td>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$address1."</td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td></td>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$address2."</td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>Town</strong></td>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$town."</td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>County</strong></td>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$county."</td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>Postcode</strong></td>

              <td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$postcode."</td>

            </tr>



            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

                <td colspan='2' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'><strong>Message</strong></td>

            </tr>

            <tr bgcolor='#eeeeee'>

                <td colspan='2' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial; font-size:11px; color:#333333;'>".$formMessage."</td>

            </tr>



            <tr><td colspan='2' style='padding: 0px;'><img src='images/whitespace.gif' alt='' width='100%' height='1' /></td></tr>

         </table>



";



$url = stripslashes($_POST["url"]);

if (!empty($url)) {

header( 'Location: http://www.go-away-spam-robots.com' );

exit();

}



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



header( 'Location: http://www.mydomain.com/sent.php' ) ;

}



?>

Do you have any ideas what may be causing the problem?

Thanks again for your help :slight_smile:

SM

4

As I wasn’t able to previously test the code I posted and it contained errors, here is a better version (tested this time).

This is just to show how to push a message back to your in-completed form, making better use of PHP arrays - I am not dealing with any problems your email script has thrown up.

<?php

$error = array();

$basic_form_elements = array(
'name', 
'address_line_1', 
'address_line_2', 
'tel', 
'mob', 
'fax', 
'inside_leg', 
);

if( isset($_POST['formsent']) ){

    if( empty($_POST['name']) ) {

    $error['name'] = " *** Please add your name" ;

    }else{

    // do your other stuff here, send mail etc
    var_dump( $_POST );
    exit();

    }
}
?>

<form action=""  method="POST" name="contact" id="contact">


<?php foreach($basic_form_elements as $el) : ?>

    <p><strong><?php echo ucwords(str_replace("_", " ", $el)) ?></strong><br />
    <input name="<?php echo $el ?>" type="text" 
        class="ctextField" value="<?php if(isset($_POST[$el])) echo htmlentities($_POST[$el])?>"/> 
    <?php echo (array_key_exists($el ,$error)) ?  $error[$el] : "" ;?></p>

<?php endforeach;?>


<input type = "hidden" name="formsent" value="1">
<input type="submit">
</form>

You can then go on and have the basic_form_elements array contain the error message then you could simplify the error checking so that if count($errors) is > 0 then re-display the form. I hope I am not making things too convoluted for you, but arrays are a cornerstone of programming - and you’d do well to spend a good time investigating how best to use them.