Catch-all PHP Form Processor
Introduction
Through my work in web development I’ve noticed the high number of times I need to write out a contact or registration form for a client. Each time I get the form fields together and then decide how I want to process the form. This usually entails a client-side validation of certain fields (required fields, email validation, etc) and then a back-end check of those fields before processing them. This process can get pretty repetitive if you do a high volume of projects or sites needing this function. I was looking for a way to process any form I create with the same script each time and thus produced this php script. It’s a lightweight, single file form processor that has a number of options. The goal of this script is to provide asingle file resource available to use over and over. For certain forms you may want to implement your own client-side validation of fields before sending them to the form processor. Let’s explore the features:
Features
- A single php file inspects form data and displays it to the user for review. Upon review the user can print and/or submit the results once all fields are valid (as discussed below)
- Can submit results to 1 or more email accounts
- Can send a blind carbon copy (bcc) as well
- Email results can be plain text or HTML formatted
- Script can be used in a standalone environment or as a part of your existing site template
- You can define which fields are required
- You can define which fields (if any) should not be displayed back to the user when they check the results before submission
- Checks for validity of email address (to confirm it is, in fact, an email address)
Requirements
This script requires PHP 4.0.7 or newer. ‘Installation’ is as simple as putting it on your server wherever you need it. I pre all of my forms by hand but you can use any WYSIWYG editor to draw up a form and give it the appropriate fields and form method and action.
Form Field Compatibility
This script successfully processes the following field types:
- text
- radio
- checkbox
- select & options(single and multiple)
- hidden
- textarea
- image
Passwords have not been tested as they are not typically something that’s processed and emailed as a result. Be sure to read below to understand how to successfully setup multiple checkboxes within a single “name” and multiple select options within a single “name”.
Setup & Customization - The Form
The Basics
Catch-All Form Processor is nothing but a processor. The form pre must be provided on your end. This script does a few things that require you to put a little bit of thought into your form. For every input field you have you must give it a name (a standard in XHTML). How you name said fields will determine how they are displayed in the results. I have followed the standard of “pretty links” all around the web now. If you have a field such as “First Name” you would (probably) want to name it “first-name” or “first_name”. This is processed in the script to read “First Name”. For example:
<input type="text" name="first-name" id="first-name" value="Erik Reagan" />
This will be read by the script as the field “First Name” having a value of “Erik Reagan”
<textarea name="additional-comments">Text area here</textarea>
This will be read by the script as the field “Additional Comments” having it’s relative value
Form Submission
This is very important! In order for the script to process the form it must recognize the submit button. Your submit button must have the name set to ’submit’ to work. Image submit buttons are also acceptable as long as you give them a value of ’submit’ AND give them a name.
<input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="Submit Results" />
The above is acceptable
<input type="submit" name="submit" id="formbutton" value="Blast Off!!!" />
The above is acceptable
<input type="image" src="button.jpg" id="formbutton" name="formbutton" ↵
value="submit" alt="Blast Off!!!" />
The above is acceptable
<input type="image" src="button.jpg" id="formbutton" value="submit" ↵
alt="Blast Off!!!" />
The above is NOT acceptable (name="something" is missing)
Require Fields
If you have fields you need to require (such as name, email, etc) you can simple append “required” to the FRONT of the name. For example:
<input type="text" name="required-first-name" id="first-name" value="Erik Reagan" />
This will alert the user if they have left a required field blank. I would suggest showing the user that the field is required by marking it somehow in your form Requiring a <select> input is a bit different. To do this you’ll need to adjust the name from something like “cars[]” to “required-cars[]” and then add an option similar to this:
<option value ="didnotchoose" selected>Choose One</option>
You can put anything you want in the “Choose One” area. This will require the select to be used. You can read more about the select usage below.
Ignore Fields
Many times developers use hidden input values during form submission. Another common factor (mostly seen in registration forms) is a terms and conditions text area. When filling out forms of this nature you typically do not want the user to ‘review’ this information. To hide these fields from the users review you can simply add “ignore” to the FRONT of the name. For example:
<textarea name="ignore-terms-and-conditions" rows="8" cols="40"> Terms and conditions that go on and on and on and on.... </textarea> The script breaks down this name as "Terms and Conditions" and does not display it to the user. Ignored fields are, however, included in the emailed results.
Email Validity
Any field with the string ‘email’ in it will be flagged as needing to be a valid email address. The standard regular expression is used to check for this validity. For example:
<input type="text" name="email-address" value="erik@erikreagan.com" id="email" /> The script will flag this field as needing to validate as an email address because it sees 'email' in the name. It will display as "Email Address" <input type="text" name="user-e-mail" value="erik@erikreagan.com" id="useremail" /> The script will flag this field as needing to validate as an email address because it sees 'email' in the name. It will display as "User Email" because the hyphen is treated like every other hyphen and is replaced by a space <input type="text" name="users-mail" value="erik@erikreagan.com" id="usersmail" /> The script will <strong>not</strong> flag this field as needing to validate as an email address because there is no full string of 'email' in the name
Form Method & Action
In order for this script to work without tweaking the core of the php the method of the form must be POST. For example:
<form method="post" action="path/to/process-form.php">
Notice the action in the above example. This is what you should set the action to (but fill in your path) if you are using the form processor as a standalone script. If you are using it inside your own site this may vary. You could leave it blank (action=”") if the script is already loaded into the same page. I trust if you are including the script in your own template you can tweak the settings as needed.
Setting up Checkboxes and Selects for multiple options
Many times you will need to allow the user to check multiple boxes or select multiple options. In order to process the results as one result you must tell the form and script that the results are lumped into an array. This is a simple process but if overlooked the results will not be pleasing
<p>Favorite Types of Cars</p> <select name="car[]" id="car" multiple> <option value ="Volvo">Volvo</option> <option value ="Saab">Saab</option> <option value ="Opel">Opel</option> <option value ="Audi">Audi</option> </select>
In this example the Select name is “car[]“. The brackets are saying to the form “Put the following results into an array” and then when the results are being processed the script sees the array and displays the results as 1. For example if the user were to pick Volvo and Audi from the above example it would be displayed as “Volvo, Audi”. You can achieve a similar result by using check boxes
Volvo <input type="checkbox" id="volvo" name="car[]" value="volvo" /> Saab <input type="checkbox" id="saab" name="car[]" value="saab" /> Opel <input type="checkbox" id="opel" name="car[]" value="opel" /> Audi <input type="checkbox" id="audi" name="car[]" value="audi" />
Setup & Customization - The Script
I have placed the primary settings at the top of the process-form.php file. These variables should be modified to your preference. I do not guarantee support of any modification of the actual script! Let’s take a look at each option. The default values are displayed below.
- $usingTemplate = false; This variable defines whether or not you are using the script by itself or within your design or site. The available options are simply ‘true’ or ‘false’
- $customForm = “path/to-your/form.php”; This variable is commented out by default. If you set $usingTemplate to ‘true’ then you can include your form within the process-form.php script by putting the path to your form here. The form.php file should contain only the form elements. There is no need for doctype, headers, etc because this (by default) includes your form within the script. This is not recommended because you would need to tweak the process-form.php file for design or style changes but I made it an option for those who are interested.
- $emailRecipient = “recipient@theirmail.com”; This is fairly obvious. One note, however, is acceptable formats. You could use the above format (handle@domain.com) or you can use a format such as “Erik Reagan <erik@erikreagan.com>”. You can also string together multiple recipients by adding a comma between. Two examples:
$emailRecipient = "erik@erikreagan.com, erik@idealdesignfirm.com"; or $emailRecipient = "Erik Reagan <erik@erikreagan.com>, Big Dorky Guy ↵ <erik@idealdesignfirm.com>" - $bccRecipient = “another-email@domainname.com”; This is for sending a blind carbon copy (bcc) to additional addresses
- $forwardUser = true; By default the script shows the user a success page and then using javascript to forward to a new location. If you do not want to forward the user for any reason set this value to ‘false’.
- $finalDestination = “http://mywebsite.com/thankyou.html”; If $forwardUser is set to ‘true’ then this is the location you will forward them to. It can be as specific as above or it can be relative to your site. For example if you just want them to go to your homepage (assuming your homepage is somethinghere.com) you can set this value to “/”.
- $subject = ‘My PHP Form’; This is the subject of the email sent containing the results
- $subjectIsInForm = false; This is used if you are allowing the user to type in the subject
- $subjectField = “required-subject”; This is used to tell the script what the input field name is of the subject if the user is typing it in manually.
- $fromName = “Your Name”; This is the “From” Name when when sent.
- $fromNameIsInForm = true; This is the same function as $subjectIsInForm respective to the from name.
- $fromNameField = “required-your-name”; This is the same function as $subjectField respective to the from name field.
- $fromEmail = “handle@domainname.com”; This is the “From Email” address when sent.
- $fromEmailIsInForm = true; This is the same function as $fromNameIsInField and $subjectIsInField respective to the from email field.
- $fromEmailField = “required-your-email”; This is the same function as $fromNameField and $subjectField respective to the from email field.
- $includeTimestamp = true; If set to true this adds the date and time at the end of the form results once emailed.
- $includeBlankFields = true; If set to true this includes fields that the user did not fill in and they are given a value of “[ left blank ]“.
- $emailHTML = true; This allows you to define what type of email formatting is sent. Set this to false if you prefer plain text. A vast majority of email clients support the level of HTML that this script produces so I suggest leaving it where it is unless you really need plain text emails sent.
- $headerTroubles = false; This variable corrects an error some Unix servers have when processing email headers defined by PHP. If you are having issues with email headers try setting this to ‘true’ and submit the form again.
Custom Style Sheet
If you choose to include this within your own template or design I’ve listed below the fields you may want to customize in your stylesheet(s). There are three portions to the display of the processed form. The main DIVS are ‘top’, ‘results’ and ‘email’. ‘top’ contains the header only (”Form Results” & “Please Review Your Information”) ‘results’ contains - you guessed it! - the results of the processed form. Keep in mind thiscould include error results. They are inside a DIV of their own nested inside of the ‘results’ div. ‘email’ contains the hidden fields while the user reviews their information. Also of note is that the Print, Email and Back buttons are inside this div. Here’s the general layout (including just about every option):
- #top
- #top > h2
- #top > h5
- #top > h5.red
- #results
- #results > div.error
- #results > div.error p
- #results > div.error strong
- #results > div.error ul
- #results > div.error ul li
- #results > div.error p a
- #results > ul#display
- #results > ul#display li
- #results > ul#display li strong
- #results > ul#display li span
- #email > input#print
- #email > input#submit
- #email > input#back
PHP Functions Used in script
- array_key_exists()
- count()
- date()
- define()
- empty()
- ereg()
- htmlspecialchars()
- implode()
- in_array()
- is_array()
- mail()
- preg_replace()
- stripslashes()
- strstr()
- strtolower()
- str_replace()
- ucwords()
Future Features?
- Possibly allow choice of including ignored fields in email or not
- Possibly allowing specification of which fields don’t go in email
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Comments
Correct. My last name, naturally, is “Rocks”
You do the math 
(I’m just glad someone read through and caught that)
I was wondering if you could comment on a few things i noticed when using your form processor.
1. When the mail is delivered, the sender is listed as “(unknown sender)” in my gmail inbox.
2. The html formatting doesn’t appear to work correctly, as it diplays the formatting tags rather than displaying the actual formatted message.
Nick
I uploaded the process-form.php file to 4 different servers and used the sample-form.html example. In the process-form.php file I set the to field to my gmail account and it worked just fine for me. Have you adjusted any of the php functions beyond the variables at the top of the script?
You can take a look at my results here
Hey Erik
I put your exact forms processor code on my server, and modified the header as follows:
$usingTemplate = false;
//$customForm = “path/to-your/form.php”;
$emailRecipient = “nicholas.romanowski@gmail.com”;
$forwardUser = true;
$finalDestination = “/”;
$subject = ‘My PHP Form’;
$fromName = “Nick Romanowski”;
$fromEmail = “nicholas.romanowski@gmail.com”;
$emailHTML = true;
You can see the results from my gmail inbox at:
http://www.paweblabs.com/php_form.jpg
You can see the live example here:
http://www.paweblabs.com/sample-form.html
Thanks a lot for your time.
@nick
I’m glad we had the opportunity to chat about the script on AIM. I’m looking forward to hearing about your results
@sam
It’s my pleasure to share!
@christo
Good thought. I’ll plan to add that as a main variable in the next round. Thanks
Also, another option might be to allow the submission to bypass the preview page and go straight to a success page. The preview, for some, just gives the them another opportunity to second guess themselves or accidentally close the browser not knowing they have to send the results.(my 2 cents)
I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. I haven’t set it up yet, but will re-post when I do.
One question with respect to emails - would it be possible to toss a simple email munger into the script so that
$emailRecipient = “recipient@theirmail.com”;
becomes something like (this is a takeoff from a munging javascript I use on my site). I don’t know enough to know whether it even makes sense in php):
$ename=”recipient”;
$etag=”@”;
$ehost=”theirmail”;
$etld=”.com”;
$emailRecipient = $ename.$etag.$ehost.$etld;
Does this make any sense?
Mark
Yes this is possible but I don’t understand it’s use. What purpose would you have in breaking it up and having PHP put it all together later? Since the recipient is a variable you are defining when you setup the script it’s almost the same thing as the following:
$subjectFirst = “My”;
$subjectSecond = ” PHP”;
$subjectThird = ” Form”;
$subject = $subjectFirst.$subjectSecond.$subjectThird;
This is just extraneous code that turns a 1 line variable into a 4 line variable (or 5 in the case of your example).
Perhaps I’m reading it wrong and you are aiming at a different purpose. Please do correct me if I am wrong.
Erik,
The idea of munging email is to avoid bots that will read the php code, recognize an email string and use it for spamming purposes. The theory is that by breaking it up into code variables, and then putting the variables together, the bots don’t see it as an email address and won’t harvest it.
Maybe this is no longer an issue (the bots don’t read php or the bots are smarter so it won’t help) but the javascript version was recommended to me years ago to allow me to post my email address on my web site without getting spammed to death.
To my knowledge bots cannot read any of the php code that is processed because it’s all done on the server end before it’s displayed in the browser. In the case of the recipient email address it is never displayed in the browser. If this was a client side script the bot sniffing would be a concern.
Erik,
This is truly just what I have been looking for. I’m playing with it on my site at http://www.midlifeflight.com/quiz2/flight_review.htm . It is doing just what I need (and much cleaner than before). what I need, and it was very simple to set up (the form is one I have been using; just changed a couple of things to conform it to what your script is looking for).
I’ll probably mess around a bit so that the answer sheet and redirect that the visitor sees has the same “look and feel” as the rest of the site but other than that…
Thanks again. And Kudos on a fine script.
Firstly, this script is AMAZING. Many, many thanks Erik. Secondly, I notice that sometimes it takes a long time to download the results email in outlook…is this common?
I added a CAPTCHA to it… and it works weel. The comments field on my form is trimming though. Don’t know what I did wrong.
Looks like the apostrophe character will cut off the rest of the characters following it - is there a fix to this?
@Barry
I was thinking of adding CAPTCHA to one example as well. May I see yours?
@Jay
I typed a straight apostrophe into each field in my sample-form.html and could not get it to cut off the following characters. Can I see your form in action?
Hey Erik,
Finally figured out what was giving me trouble with your script and Gmail.
I stripped the “\r” from your headers and just used “\n” instead of “\r\n”. Using “\r\n” created a double rowbreak resulting in Gmail thinking headers were all sent after first row.
Another minor thing i noticed is that if you make multiple selections in the select box, one being “choose one”. The form errors out, saying the field was left blank and “didnotchoose” is displayed as one of the selections.
@Nick
That’s really odd because it works just fine in Gmail for me (as we discussed). I wonder what causes Gmail to interpret the data differently. If anyone knows please let me (us) know. All of my tests were on Apache servers and Nick’s (correct me if I’m wrong) were on Litespeed.
Thanks for noticing the ‘didnotchoose’ error upon inclusion of selection. I’ll write it in so that it’s not included if someone chooses that among other options.
I just wanted to update and let everyone know updated version is in the works with many of your suggestions taken into consideration. It will be released in a week or two and, I believe, will add some well needed missing features and fix a few bugs that have been noted.
If you would like to know when this is released you can follow the feed on this post here.
I’m in the throes of testing this excellent form processor, and think you ought to know about this section of the code:
if ($subjectIsInForm) { define(’SUBJECT’, $_POST[$subjectField]); } else { define(’SUBJECT’, $subject); }
if ($fromNameIsInForm) { define(’SUBJECT’, $_POST[$fromNameField]); } else { define(’SUBJECT’, $fromName); }
if ($fromEmailIsInForm) { define(’SUBJECT’, $_POST[$fromEmailField]); } else { define(’SUBJECT’, $fromEmail); }
I’ve had to change SUBJECT in the last 2 lines to the correct names!
Also, I’m having trouble with the fromNameIsInForm and fromEmailIsInForm variables. They’ll accept “name” and “email” but turn their noses up at “required-name” and “required-email” respectively.
I would never be able to conceive and implement a processor like this. Thank you for not only doing so but also making it freely available. God bless you!
WOW! That’s what I get for copy and paste, eh! I’m so sorry for releasing the code like that and thank you very much for catching it. I have corrected it and it has been re-uploaded.
I tested the custom name and email option and it’s working fine for me. Make sure you have the field name represented in the php variable correctly. I’ve also adjusted the sample-form.html that is packaged with the script to use this aspect of the processor. Let me know if you need any more help with it.
Again - Thank you!
found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later ..
We have two forms on our Drupal site, one at http://5loaves2fishes.net/node/6 and the other at http://5loaves2fishes.net/node/119 (bottom of the page in both cases). I’ve now integrated the processor into the site and it works absolutely flawlessly - there’s seamless progression through the form submission process and return to the original page. Totally brilliant, and a real answer to prayer.
I would like to modify it, however, by changing the “print” option of the review screen to a “back” button so people have the opportunity to correct any mistakes. Our forms are very simple so printing is not an option people are likely to want. I have the code but don’t know where to put it. A hint would be great!
Once again, thank you so much for this script.
Hey Watchkeeper
If you’re using a text editor that shows the line numbers take a look at line 201. That’s where I’m adding the Print button to the display block. Since you said you had the code to use I’ll leave it at that. Let me know if you have any other questions. I’m glad you’ve found great use from the script!
Thanks, Erik. I use Notepad2 (http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html) which not only has line numbers but auto tag completion, syntax highlighting and other bells and whistles. 
In the meantime, here are two more items for your consideration:
1. In the line:
$block = “\nThere was an error processing the form.\n\n”;
the closing paragraph tag is missing its / i.e.
\n\n should be \n\n
2. When submitting text from a text area, the processor throws a fit when confronted by a single apostrophe. So a paragraph that begins “I’ve decided to blah blah blah …” appears in the e-mail as “I”. Everything after and including the apostrophe is binned.
OK, trying No, 1 again since the tag was parsed:
1. In the line:
$block = “\n{p}There was an error processing the form.{p}\n\n”;
the closing paragraph tag is missing its / i.e. {p}\n\n should be {/p}\n\n.
I’m absolutely certain you know what {p} represents!
Thanks for catching that closing paragraph tag. It has brought a bigger problem to my attention. Lines 209 and 207 are switched. I’ll update the .zip soon.
I think the problem with the apostrophe is due to magic quotes being turned on. Do you know if they are on in your PHP settings? I have not experienced this apostrophe issue in the textarea.
This looks fantastic, and what I’ve been needing for a while, but it doesn’t seem to be available for download anywhere. I may be blind, but can you point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
Haha. That’s what I get for changing themes. The download link and other info is part of the custom fields meta. Clearly that is not built in to this theme by default. I’ve made the adjustment so the download (and demo) are available at the top of the page now.
Thanks, David. Looking forward to your thoughts…
Hello.
Great script!
Right now it setup to have 2 thank you pages. One defined in the script and one I direct them to.
Is there a way so when users confirm their info and press submit that they are directed to my thankyou.html page? Instead of the Thank You you will be directed page.
Thanks,
Patty
While I’m still here, would you consider adding a “Back” button to the Review page? Just in case the reviewer sees something that needs to be changed.
@ asad
Due to the attachment handling have more options set within the php.ini file on servers I didn’t want to mess with that on a “process any form” scale. Attachments need to be handled on a specific basis.
@ Patty & Pete
That’s a good thought. It’s a very simple adjustment that you can do on your own until I release another update. In your text editor scroll down to find the following line of code (line 116)
$block = "<div id=\"top\">\n\n<h2>Thank You</h2>\n\n</div>\n\n<p class=\"sent\">Your form has been submitted.\n";</p>And add this above it (a new line)
header("Location: yourpage.html"); exit;That should get the job done until I add it in the script.
@Pete
A back button would be logical. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that. Great suggestion. Thanks!
When I use the txt email instead of html and someone uses an & or ” or other odd characters the form submits the ascii code for that character. Is there a way to allow the form to submit the actual characters.
Thanks for much for posting a fix!! It works great thank you.
Another question. Is it possible that if all fields are filled out correctly to have it submit fully and forward to the thankyou.html page? Instead of going to the confirm page?
Then is users don’t have the form filled out correctly it goes to that page that shows all fields filled out.. how is functions now.
Not sure if this makes sense.
Thanks!
@christo
Good catch. Go down to line 74 (which should be the following)
$value2 = htmlspecialchars($value2);
And delete it (or comment it out). That should fix the problem.
@Patty
This is the second request of that nature so I’ll strongly consider putting that in the next update as well. Unfortunately that’s not as easy of a fix as the last one so you’ll just have to wait on it…
Wonderful piece of code Erik.
Has anybody modified this to *NOT* go to a print/send screen
but just send and go to confirmation?
@ web jedi
I modified by changing line 49 from
if (array_key_exists(’emailnow’, $_POST)) {
to
if (array_key_exists(’submit’, $_POST)) {
I’m a PHP idiot (took ne an hour to figure out) so use at your own risk. I would let Erik make the mod his knowledge is obviosly superior to ours (put together).
@Karen
Without any error message or “this is what I did” I cannot help you.
Thanks for the prayers and wishes for my daughter!
The source will do me no good unless I know the problem that you are having. I just went through and inserted dummy data for each field, was then sent to the verification page, then seemingly successfully submitted the form and was then redirected to your thank you page. It seems to be functioning.
That said - what problem are you having?
That is probably dependent upon your web server and email provider. Have you used the php mail function on your server before?
I got your registration on my yahoo account but not my godaddy (info@nubranch.com)account. I am brand new to PHP and am stumbling around in the dark about getting forms to work with PHP.
BTW, very impressed with your life and pages. You should charge for this script your daughter will need diapers.
Greetings Erik,
Just install the script and I like what I see so far, but I can only see so far. I have ran several test and everything seems to work as it should, except I don’t get any emails from the test.
What would cause the emails to not be delivered. I am a gmail.com user if that matters. I have looked through the forum to see if there was any similar problems with an answer, but none found.
If you could lend a hand, that would be great.
Thanks
@Karen & Larry
I am not sure how to address the issue you two are having. I too have a gmail account and from 4 different servers have successfully received messages sent from a test form to my gmail account. My guess is it’s a mixture of the server’s integrity (that the script is hosted on) and your email spam filtering.
@Karen
If you are receiving the form results to your yahoo account but not your godaddy hosted account this sounds like a spam filtering issue.
@Larry
If you are not receiving ANY emails from the results it may be a server issue. Have you tried sending the results to a different email account?
Also - thank you for taking the time to comment on my beautiful baby girl!
Not sure what happened, except I turned “false” into “true” about having problems with headers and now I GOT MAIL!!!
So thanks and have a great day.
Larry
Hi,
I want that customer fill the form and click on submit button. at that time the page will be showing filled form and if any mistake is happened then click on back button to made required changes .Now i have a problem that when i click on back button the form losted their input.
please help me.
Thank’s in-advance.
@ Larry
I wasn’t aware that the header issues with some older Unix systems could cause the email to be completely undelivered. Good to know!
@Urmila
Are you referring to the use of my script’s back button? If so I am unsure of the issue. When I view the “Out of the Box” Demo at the top of the page and use the back button - my form input is still there.
@Urmila
I have sent you an email with my response. If you find use of the script on this page I’d love to hear about it.
Hi Erik,
Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU for this script! And also Thank you for making it freely available AND still making out time to give free support!
God bless!
Hi Erik,
It`s a great script! I love its flexibility and “catch-all”.
I was just wondering if the Review stage could be overleaped?
Also, how could I include it in a WP template?
Thanks a lot!
I just saw christo used this:
if (array_key_exists(’submit’, $_POST)) {
to bypass the review page. But, when I use it, the script doesn`t check for required fields (i.e. email). It just sends the form …
Any other solution for bypassing the review page?
I’m running into the same problems that Karen and Larry were running into above… I even changed the false to true for the headers and I till cannot get any emails sent to me. I have tried my go daddy email address, mike@smartfitmtg.com, my personal email mikeblumenstein@comcast.net, and my cell phone text message address 2067951454@vtext.com with no avail… I’m not getting any error messages… what would you suggest?
this is how I modified the script… see anythig wrong?
$usingTemplate = false; // Set to true if you are using this form within your own site (a php include for example).
$customForm = "path/to-your/form.php"; // If you are using your own template or site define the path to your contact form which should be it's own .php file
$emailRecipient = "mikeblumenstein@comcast.net"; // The email address the form results should be sent to
$bccRecipient = "2067951454@vtext.com"; // The email address that you would like a blind carbon copy sent to (optional)
$forwardUser = true; // Set to false if you do NOT want to forward user to a new page or site after form completion
$finalDestination = "/application_success.htm"; // Page or website you would like the form to forward to once submitted
$subject = "New Online Application"; // The Subject of the Email when it is sent
$subjectIsInForm = false; // Set to true if the email Subject is filled in by the user in your form. If set to true this overrides the preceeding $subject variable
$subjectField = "required-subject"; // If your subject is defined in your form put the field name here.
$fromName = "Your Name"; // "From" Name when when sent
$fromNameIsInForm = true; // Set to true if the Name the email results should be From is supplied in your form
$fromNameField = "name"; // If your from name is defined in your form put the field name here
$fromEmail = "info@smartfitmtg.com"; // "From Email" address when sent. For multiple separate by comma (user1@domainname.com,user2@yahoo.com,etc@gmail.com)
$fromEmailIsInForm = true; // Set to true if the Email address the email results should be From is supplied in your form
$fromEmailField = "email"; // If your from email address is defined in your form put the field name here
$includeTimestamp = true; // Set to false if you do not want the date and timestamp included in your emailed results
$includeBlankFields = true; // Set to false if you do not wish to email fields that aren't filled in
$emailHTML = true; // Set to true if you prefer HTML formatted emails. Set to false if you prefer plain text. (HTML is widely accepted and looks much better)
$headerTroubles = true; // Only set this to true if youe email headers aren't being sent correctly from your server.
@oriollo
I haven’t coded out a solution yet but it will be in the next update. I’ve been insanely busy lately and will probably stay that way for a little while so the update won’t be here too soon. I will certainly get it out as soon as I can thought so if you want to subscribe to my feed you can find out as soon as it’s updated!
@Mike
That’s very odd. It may be a sendmail issue. What happens if you run the following line in a PHP script:?
mail("mike@smartfitmtg.com","Test Email","This is just a test");That should send a test email using the typical PHP mail() function. If that does not work then it’s a server configuration problem. There may be another approach depending on how the server is setup. Are you able to email via any other scripts installed on this server?
this is my first time working with php scripts… I wouldn’t know where to put that to make it run the test… this is a godaddy linux server, any idea to see how I can see how the server is set up? or should I just give godaddy a call and see if they can fix it on their end?
I love how the script works, I just need it to send those darn emails.
okay I contacted GoDaddy, they only support their own scripts, big surprise… well I used their standard form mailer, and it worked to send the email, now i need to figure out how to make yours send the mail too.
This is the php script that worked… I assume they pull the “send to” email address off their server as they had me specify that on the site management screen, and I don’t see it specified in the script. Here is the script:
<?php
$request_method = $_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"];
if($request_method == “GET”){
$query_vars = $_GET;
} elseif ($request_method == “POST”){
$query_vars = $_POST;
}
reset($query_vars);
$t = date(”U”);
$file = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . “/../data/gdform_” . $t;
$fp = fopen($file,”w”);
while (list ($key, $val) = each ($query_vars)) {
fputs($fp,”\n”);
fputs($fp,”$val\n”);
fputs($fp,”\n”);
if ($key == “redirect”) { $landing_page = $val;}
}
fclose($fp);
if ($landing_page != “”){
header(”Location: http://“.$_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"].”/$landing_page”);
} else {
header(”Location: http://“.$_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"].”/”);
}
?>
so what does that tell you?
Thank you very much Erik, I appreciate the help!
also, is this helpful?
If you use the mail() function in your PHP, you do not need to specify an outgoing mail server. If you are using some other method besides mail() in your PHP code, use relay-hosting.secureserver.net for your relay server.
The mail function in PHP will use the server it resides on as the ‘outgoing mail server’. As for the PHP you posted above, it looks like it just sends data to a file and GoDaddy then runs a script around that file somewhere. That’s an odd approach but probably done so that they don’t reveal any of their real process (possible screening, storing data for records, etc). Try this:
1) Create a new file somewhere on yoru website called “test_email.php”
2) Make the contents of that file the following:
< ?php if(mail("mike@smartfitmtg.com","Test Email Submission","This is just a test email")): ?>
The email was sent
< ?php else: ?>
The email was not sent
< ?php endif; ?>
// For some reason wordpress is putting a space between my open bracket (< ) and my "?php". Make sure there is no space there!
3) Open that page in your browser. If your message says “The email was sent” and you do NOT receive it - there is a server issue that could be related to php.ini
so, your first name is erik reagan?