Question

I have an order form (table) that I need to be sent to an email address.
I understand the basics of how to send an email in PHP, but not the specifics
of this situation (taking the information of the cookie array + form elements and put them in body of the PHP mailer)

I am using this link’s answer to store the order form as an array in a cookie

Then I use this javascript to create the table in HTML, inside the #catalog div. The important part is the for loop that makes the table. Using list.items(); one can list the “cookie array” as an array

function loopArrayMail() { 
if ($.cookie('productWishlist') == null) {
    html = ""; $('#catalog').html(html);
} else {
    var cookie = $.cookie("productWishlist"); var items = cookie ? cookie.split(/,/) : new Array();
    var html = "<table><tr><th>Product</th><th># to order</th></tr>";
    for(var i=0;i<items.length;i++){ html += "<tr><td width='450'>"+items[i]+"</td><td><input type='text' name='numberOfItems' /></td></tr>"; }
    html += "</table>"; $('#catalog').html(html);
}}

There is a text input next to each item in the order form for the user to input the # of items they want.
How would I send the contents of the table and each form input as an email in PHP?

My guess is that I’d have to take the cookie array, and with each iteration have an array of all the text inputs and use foreach so that they are together in the email (unsure of how to do this exactly). It is also important that there can be any number of text inputs as the number of items on the order form will increase/decrease.

Here is an example of using foreach to get multiple input boxes, but how might I combine the array from my cookie with the text inputs?

Answer 1

First you must give the form elements a name followed by [] indicating that it is an array, when you create the form elements in the loopArrayMail() function.

for(var i=0;i<items.length;i++){
  html += "<tr><td width='450'>"+items[i]+"</td><td><input type='text' name='ordernum[]' size='8' /></td></tr>";
}

Since the cookie is a string you must first explode the string based on the delimiter which is a comma. Place the two arrays into variables. Then use a for loop to go through all of the array.

function explode_trim($str, $delimiter = ',') {
  if ( is_string($delimiter) ) {
    $str = trim(preg_replace('|\\s*(?:' . preg_quote($delimiter) . ')\\s*|', $delimiter, $str));
    return explode($delimiter, $str);
  } 
return $str; }

$orderCookie = explode_trim($_COOKIE['productWishlist']);
$orderNum = $_POST['ordernum'];

for ( $i = 0; $i < count($orderCookie); $i++) {
  echo $orderCookie[$i] . ' = ' . $orderNum[$i] . '<br />';
}