[Joseph]

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How to Make an Email Form

So you wanna' put an email form on your site? Well, there's good news: You don't have to know advanced programming to put a nifty form on one or all of your webpages. On the other hand, you do need a bit more than simple HTML -- but not much more if you do it right. Technically, email forms generally consist of at least two parts: the webpage code, where your visitors put in their details; and a form processor. The latter is written in a different programming language, like Perl or PHP.

Basically what happens is that your visitor fills in a bunch of blanks or makes menu selections and submits the form, which is then sent to another program that does something with it. In this case, it just sends their feedback directly to you by email. You don't have to know anything about how to make the processor, though, thanks to a gem of a site called Response-O-Matic. Bravenet offers a similar free service, as well.

When you use Response-O-Matic, you fill out a template with information like your email address and some details for creating the "Thank You" page folks see after they send their information. Then submit the form, and you'll get back some HTML code that you can modify and paste onto your webpage. The only downside of all this is that your viewer sees an ad on the Thank You page. This can be removed by sending $50 a year to the company.

You'll have to manually edit the code to get it exactly the way you want it, but they give examples of just about every kind of form field or selection list you can think of. A good knowledge of tables is helpful in doing this. After that, just paste your newly-customized code into the rest of your webpage, and voila'! All you have to do now is wait for scores of fans to send gushing praise to you using your brand new email form.


This article has been brought to you by Adam Gentry of WebForGod Design Services. You can write to him if you need any help with forms or other webpage coding issues. (you can contact him as webforgood on this forum).

[Isaacme]

Thanks for sharring Joe. ::starwars

[ozPATT]

ooh. forms...

I stayed away from foms for so long, cos I only ever knew of processing with perl. I always managed to do something wrong, so tried to avoid forms. Then someone suggested processing using php. It changed my life!!!

Basically, it goes a little something like this:
form.php

<?php

  $form .= ('<form method="POST" action="processform.php">');
  $form .= ('<p><label for="name">Name: </label><input type="text" name="name" id="name" maxlength="255" /></p>');
  $form .= ('<p><label for="address">Address: </label><input type="text" name="address" id="address" maxlength="255" /></p>');
  $form .= ('<p><label for="comments">Comments: </label><textarea name="comments" id="comments"></textarea></p>');
  $form .= ('<p><input type="submit" name="submit" value="Process Me!" /></p>');
  $form .= ('</form>');
  
  echo $form;
  
?>

then to process it...
processform.php

<?
  
  //post the contents of the form
  $name     = $_POST['name'];
  $address  = $_POST['address'];
  $comments = $_POST['comments'];
  
  $emptyfields = 0;  //set the $emptyfields to 0
  
  if(!$name) { //if the name field wasn't filled in
    $emptyfields++;
  }
  if(!$address) {   //if the address field wasn't filled out
    $emptyfields++;
  }
  if(!$comments) {   //if the comments field wasn't filled out
    $emptyfields++;
  }
  //if there were errors tell the user
  if($emptyfields > 0) {
    echo('<p>Form not filled out correctly! Go Back and do it again!</p>');
  }
  else {  //otherwise, process the form
  
  // ************Begin Configure***************
  //Put where you want the email to go
  $mailto = "email@myaddress.com";
  //Put your subject in here
  $subject = "This will show in the subject line";
  //Put where to redirect to after sending the email
  $redirect = "index.php";
  // ************End Configure****************

  foreach($HTTP_POST_VARS as $key => $value) { //get the posted contents

    //write the contents of the form into the email
    $message .= $key . ': ' . stripslashes($value);
    $message .= "\n"; //Note the double quotes

  }
  //send the form contents
  mail($mailto, $subject, $message);
}

?>

Simple huh?

[Joseph]

hehe... now we got the code to it too! Perfect. TQ!

[ozPATT]

Hope you like it.

php is open source, so why shouldn't the code be

[WebForGod]

I got this when I tried to process the form:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /home/webforgo/public_html/form/processform.php on line 47

The host is PHP-capable; I've gotten other scripts to work on it. You can find my code for this one here, which is just a cut-and-paste of yours. Any idea what caused the error? I'm pretty new to PHP... Thanks.

[ozPATT]

ooh, it was untested code... I will have a quick look now. probably forgot a comma somewhere.

Just as a side note, the form part you put anywhere on your page, the processform.php should contain only the code I mentioned. No head tags, html tags, body tags, nothing. Just the code i provided.

looking for the error now...

found an error, could be the one... I have updated the code. Basically i forgot to clost the else statement when processing it. you just need a curly bracket right at the end.

see if that helps.

just tested my own code, works fine. Must have been that bracket.

[ozPATT]

Ok, here is something for you to test... go to

www.drybonesuk.com/patrick/form.php

put in your email address, fill in the other 2, and you should get an email sent to you. this was made using the above code, with just a cuople of minor changes to it.

I did everything on the one page, and used the $_GET variable to processthe form. Here is the code:

<?

if($_GET['act'] == "process") {

  //post the contents of the form
  $name     = $_POST['name'];
  $email  = $_POST['email'];
  $comments = $_POST['comments'];

  $emptyfields = 0;  //set the $emptyfields to 0

  if(!$name) { //if the name field wasn't filled in
    $emptyfields++;
  }
  if(!$email) {   //if the address field wasn't filled out
    $email++;
  }
  if(!$comments) {   //if the comments field wasn't filled out
    $emptyfields++;
  }
  //if there were errors tell the user
  if($emptyfields > 0) {
    echo('<p>Form not filled out correctly! Go Back and do it again!</p>');
  }
  else {  //otherwise, process the form

  // ************Begin Configure***************
  //Put where you want the email to go
  $mailto = $email;
  //Put your subject in here
  $subject = "This will show in the subject line";
  //Put where to redirect to after sending the email
  $redirect = "form.php";
  // ************End Configure****************

  foreach($HTTP_POST_VARS as $key => $value) { //get the posted contents

    //write the contents of the form into the email
    $message .= $key . ': ' . stripslashes($value);
    $message .= "\n"; //Note the double quotes

  }
  //send the form contents
  mail($mailto, $subject, $message);
  }
}
else {

  $form .= ('<form method="POST" action="form.php?act=process">');
  $form .= ('<p><label for="name">Name: </label><input type="text" name="name" id="name" maxlength="255" /></p>');
  $form .= ('<p><label for="email">Email: </label><input type="text" name="email" id="email" maxlength="255" /></p>');
  $form .= ('<p><label for="comments">Comments: </label><textarea name="comments" id="comments"></textarea></p>');
  $form .= ('<p><input type="submit" name="submit" value="Process Me!" /></p>');
  $form .= ('</form>');
  
  echo $form;
}
?>

try it out and see what happens!

[Joseph]

nice, worked!

[ozPATT]

Glad to hear it.

Off to learn some more ASP.NET now!

[UndergroundMark]

Here is my e-mailing php form.

Akk you have to do is set the action of the form as the URL of this page and no matter how many fields or whatever are there it will send it to my e-mail. Oh and you have to put this in your html:

<input type="hidden" name="sendto" value="yourname@domain.com">

PHP Code:

<html>
<title>Feedback Send Form</title>
<body>
<?php
if(!isset( [code]%4$s[/code] POST['sendto']))
{
print('No Address to send to!');
}
else
{
$message="";
foreach( [code]%4$s[/code] POST as $name=>$val)
{
$message.="[".$name."]:".$val."\n";
}
$ip="N/A";
$ip=@ [code]%4$s[/code] SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$message.="\n\n".'[IP]:'.$ip."\n";
$to= [code]%4$s[/code] POST['sendto'];
$from=((isset( [code]%4$s[/code] POST['from']) && strlen(trim( [code]%4$s[/code] POST['from']))>0)?('From'. [code]%4$s[/code] POST['from']):(''));
$subject="Feedback Form.";
$res=@ mail($to,$subject,$message,$from);
if($res)
{
print('Feedback successfully sent.');
}
else
{
print('Feedback failed sending!');
}
}
?>
</body>
</html>