Question

I got some help with an email form, and I feel that I am almost there as the script sends an email but need a few tweaks before I put the form up. Here is my code right now:

index.html:

<div id="main">
    <form method="post" action="mailer.php">
        <div id="text">
            Please enter your email address.
        </div>
        <input type="text" name="q" id="search" />
        <input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="Go!" />
    </form>
</div>

mailer.php:

<?php

$email = addcslashes($_REQUEST['q']) ;
if ($email==FALSE){
    echo "You forgot to enter your email";
}
else

mail( "[e-mail]", "E-Mail entered",
"E-Mail entered: $email");
header( "Location: http://www.example.com/thankyou.html" );
?>

A few issues I am running into:

The email being sent does not actually include the email entered, the email comes from [e-mail] and the Body is Email Entered:
which does not include the email string – is there something buggy with the code?

Also, my if statement doesn’t seem to work. Even if I leave the box black, it still assumes a valid email address was sent.

Finally, is there a parameter that sees if the address is in the correct format? ie: includes the @ the . and the domain?

Many thanks for any help!

Answer 1

First off, you can use filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) to test the submitted address. This function returns false if it’s not valid. Second, mail() requires a 4th parameter to assign a return address in your message header. Here’s an example:

mail(
   '[e-mail]',
   'Subject',
   'Message Body',
   'From: [e-mail]'
   )

Regarding your if/else statement, test $_POST['q'] == NULL first, then change $email = addcslashes($_REQUEST['q']); to $email = str_replace(array('\'', '"'), '', $_POST['q']); – no real reason to escape characters in this case. Just take em’ out.

Edit: This is what your code should look like:

$email = str_replace(array('\'', '"'), '', $_POST['q']);

$isValid = filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

if ( $_POST['q'] == NULL ) {

    echo "You forgot to enter your email";

} elseif ( $isValid == FALSE ) {

    echo "Please enter a valid email address";

} else {

    mail(
        '[e-mail]', // Your address that you want the message sent to
        'Subject',
        'Message Body',
        'From: ' . $email // The address collected
    );

    header( "Location: http://www.example.com/thankyou.html" );

}

Does that make a little more sense?

Do note that because of modern spam filters, this method may not make it to every recipient. Creating useful email headers can be a bit of an art-form that takes some practice.