How to give confirmation after submit???

[Anon]

hello,

Can you help me figure this out? I want to give a message to the user (via text or pop up window) that there email has been sent.

This is my situation:

1. I have contact_us.html page. It has form fields and a submit button.

2. the user fills out field and presses the submit button.

3. the submit button calls my send_contact_form.php file. This php file formats the text and sends the data via the mail() function.

NOW, is the part I can't figure out....
I have this line of code after the mail() funcion:

header("Location: $HTTP_REFERER");

which refreshes the contact_us.html page. That is good, however, I want to let the user know the email was actually sent.

How can I do that?

Notes:
1. I don't want to load another page, that states, "your email has been sent"

2. Can the .php open a small browser window, like a pop-up window? So to process the data/send the email and let the user know it happened.

3. I would like the contact_us.html page to be refreshed with text at the top giving the confirmation.

THANK You Very Much for helping
larry

[amcgrath]

Here's what would do:

Scrap the send_contact_form.php script. You don't need it. Instead, put the logic into the contact_us file(change it to a php script.)

In the mail logic currently in send_contact_form now in contact_us (if you stay with my line of thinking), do a check for the presence of the submit button (give it a variable name). You might want to also ensure $HTTP_POST_VARS array is present as well. If so, then do your mail set, $msg = "Thanks a lot we just sentcha something." and echo $msg at the top of the contact us page. (You may have figured out by now that if the page is first requested, then you can change the message to "Fill out below and we'll contact you...".

I guess it's personal preference,but if the script isn't that lengthy, sometimes its a lil easier to just do everything in one file.

[Anon]

First there is no way to open another confirmation window in php. You can do that with JavaScript but since you are using the header redirect you can't use JavaScript within the send_contact_form.php file.

The only way I can think of to accomplish this is to communicate between the pages with either a session variable or a cookie. All you would need to do is set up an email_confirmation_flag variable set the value from send_contact_form.php to either true or false and check its value on the contact_us.html page and display the confirmation message. Also you could send the flag in the header("Location: $HTTP_REFERER"); like header("Location: $HTTP_REFERER?email_confirmation_flag=true");

[Anon]

Thanks Allen and Brian....

please forgive me for asking newbie questions:

Brian, I'm confused on how you show the confirmation message on the contact_us.html page. I understand the variable that the php file passed back will signal to display the text, but how does it NOT display the text. Can you give an example of the If-Then statement that displays only when 'true'?

Allen, You mean have 2 echo messages at the top of the page. One is for confirmation
and one is for "please fill out...". The variable is set false to begin with and true when user presses submit.

Thanks

[tangent]

No clue if this is at all ok "good" way to do this sort of thing but it's how I've been doing it.
in hte header call make it $HTTP_REFERER?sent=true
make the contact file a script and have a in statment to see if sent == true. if it doesn't have them enter their info and submit, if it does give them a nice thank you message and don't clutter the screen with the input form.

[Anon]

Thanks Mike...

But I am a newbie at PHP/HTML... and an old pro at client server programming.

I understand what you are saying, but I don't know how to code it.

((I need to take a class on PHP))

Do you do something like
If (sent)
echo confirmation message
else
echo please fill out...

thanks

[amcgrath]

Here ya go:
<?
$msg = "Fill it out and we'll mailsomething.";

if ($HTTP_POST_VARS && $submit_button_name) {
error check....
mail....
$msg = "woo hoo1 the mail went!";

}
?>

<?= $msg ?>

<form method="post" action="<?= $PHP_SELF ?>">

.... form fields .....

<input type="submit name="submit_button_name" value="send it">

Kinda simplified, but you sohld get the idea.

[amcgrath]

larry wrote:

Allen, You mean have 2 echo messages at the top of the page. One is for confirmation

and one is for "please fill out...". The variable is set false to begin with and true when user presses submit.

No, you'll only have one message, it's value will changed based on the action. Check the example (a very simplified and not really correct version) and you'll see how pretty straightforward it is.

[Anon]

I works but I'm not sure I understand WHY it worked.

URrrrrGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Question though...
is there a way to format that text that is show in the $msg variable?

THANKS AGAIN.
🙂

[amcgrath]

your welcome.

Sure, you can format it any way you want, it's only a string.
As for WHY it works... shrug, not to seem high and mighty, but if ya stare at it long enuff, the answer will come.