Question

I have been working on creating a PHP email form recently and cannot manage to send the checkbox values correctly. The form is one I found elsewhere and have been modifying. The HTML is fairly straightforward.

<label for="needs">I am looking for...</label>
<input name="needs[]" id="needs" type="checkbox" value="product list">A Product List<br>
<input name="needs[]" id="needs" type="checkbox" value="educational support">Educational Support<br>
<input name="needs[]" id="needs" type="checkbox" value="catering options">Catering Options<br>
<input name="needs[]" id="needs" type="checkbox" value="party ideas">Party Ideas<br>
<input name="needs[]" id="needs" type="checkbox" value="healthy alternatives">Healthy Alternatives<br>
<input name="needs[]" id="needs" type="checkbox" value="other">Other (please specify)<br>

As of right now, when I send it through the PHP it simply returns either a single selected value or if multiple are selected is says “array”. What I would like is for the message of the mail being sent to me to list the selected values. I have searched elsewhere, but have not found a situation the same as mine yet. Here is the PHP:

<?php
$msg=
'Name:      '.$_POST['name'].'<br />
Category:   '.$_POST['category'].'<br />
Email:      '.$_POST['email'].'<br />
Phone:      '.$_POST['telephone'].'<br />
Looking for:    '.$_POST['needs'].'<br />
IP:     '.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].'<br /><br />

Message:<br /><br />

'.nl2br($_POST['message']).'

';
?>

The rest of the code is setup and sending of the message. I realize that there are other ways of doing what I want, but would like to continue using the $msg that is included here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Modified code:

$msg=
'Name:      '.$_POST['name'].'<br />
Category:   '.$_POST['category'].'<br />
Email:      '.$_POST['email'].'<br />
Phone:      '.$_POST['telephone'].'<br />
Looking for:    '.(is_array($_POST['needs'])?implode("\n", $_POST['needs']):$_POST['needs']).'<br />
IP:     '.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].'<br /><br />

Message:<br /><br />

'.nl2br($_POST['message']).'

';

Answer 1

you should work with $_POST[‘needs’] as with array since it’s really an array. if you want just to get the list of checked checkboxes you can join the array to the string:

$checked_options = implode("\n", $_POST['needs']);

you can check whether certain option is checked or not:

if (in_array("educational support", $_POST['needs'])) echo ("educational support is checked");

and so on…

in your case i would do the following:

<?php
$msg=
'Name:      '.$_POST['name'].'<br />
Category:   '.$_POST['category'].'<br />
Email:      '.$_POST['email'].'<br />
Phone:      '.$_POST['telephone'].'<br />
Looking for:    '.(is_array($_POST['needs'])?implode("\n", $_POST['needs']):$_POST['needs']).'<br />
IP:     '.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].'<br /><br />

Message:<br /><br />
'.nl2br($_POST['message']).'

';
?>

'.nl2br($_POST['message']).'

‘;
?>