Send HTML page with PHP

mrhappy

My name is Ray. I am worse than a newbie...I'm an OLD newbie. I need one of you brilliant young people to help me. PHP is such a useful language that you must be able to do this. Sorry for the lengthy post.

I have a PHP page that I call a template. It has areas that are filled from MySQL using echo statements. Like a form letter.

I call the database and it fills in the echo areas. Now here's what I'm trying to do. I have multiple users who will be using this template and do not want to create a separate page for each one.

I want to email my completed template to someone. I want them to be able to click on a link to "Tell A Friend" and forward my full HTML page to someone else. But I want to receive a notice via email back that the person I sent it to sent it to someone new.

I created a form they link to from the email message with yourname, youremail, friendname, friendemail fields for them to fill in and submit. That sends information back to me. I even found an email script that will send the HTML page via email. But in that script the "message" part of the email is written as $message = ' (single quote) HTML PAGE CODE AREA then '; at the end of the HTML page.

I can't figure out how to create a master template page that will allow me to use the echo method of filling in the area of the HTML code within the single quotes. It won't work without them either.

I hope this is just a stupid newbie issue that can be easily answered by you experienced folks.

I would appreciate a reply that's heavily commented if possible. It helps a dummy like me see what you are talking about.

Thanks,

Ray

sks1024

Assuming that you master template is static other than the variables here is something for you to go on

//do database connection
$Host = "localhost";
$User = "username";
$Password = "password";
$DBName = "yourdatabase";
$Link = mysql_connect ($Host, $User, $Password) or die ("The database connection could not be established!");

//query email address table
$email_query = "Select * from tblemail"; 
$email_result = mysql_db_query ($DBName, $email_query, $Link);
$myname = "Your Name";
$from_email = "you@your_domain.com";

//while their are results, send your html email with link in it back to your page with the tell a freind form
while ($email_row = mysql_fetch_array($email_result)) {

$to = $email_row[email];

//This is your master template, change it as you need.
$message = "
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<p>Thanks for checking out my site.</p>
<p>Click <a href=http://www.yourdomain.com/tell_friend.php?$link_id>here</a> to tell a friend.</p>
</body>
</html>";

//Fire off the email
mail($to, "Email Subject", $message, "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n" 
."Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n"
."From: ".$myname." <".$from_email.">\r\n");
}

The tell a freind page off course will have the form to fill out for the user to send it. Also you may want to pass a variable in the URL in the master template to the form so when it is sent the recepient link takes them back to where you want them to go. i.e the master template

Stan

mrhappy

Stan,

Thanks for the prompt reply and great "commented" example. I will try it and see how it works.

I REALLY appreciate it. I'll be back if I get stuck.

Well... I'm stuck!....

If I put my template (I guess it's not a template because all fields of information are filled in) I should say my HTML page with all variables filled in, it works fine. I had that much working with my old version.

The problem is when I use the template with the variable echo statements. It will not work at all if I leave the double quote (") after the $message = "

It stops at each variable line with a PHP error message.

If I change the double quote to a single quote it will process and send the email but without putting the information from the database into the spots where the echo statements are.

Can you have variable echo statements within the single quotes?

Thanks for trying to help me!

Ray

sks1024

You dont have to echo the variable because you output it with the while loop. You dont have to put the variables in quotes. You shouldn't.

while ($email_row = mysql_fetch_array($email_result)) {

$to = $email_row[email];


$message = "
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<p>Thanks for checking out my site.</p>
<p>$row[variable_1]</p>
<p>$row[variable_2]</p>
<p>Click <a href=http://www.yourdomain.com/tell_friend.php?$link_id>here</a> to tell a friend.</p>
</body>
</html>";
}

mrhappy

Stan,

Sorry to be such a pain in the butt...

My "template" uses this format throughout. In this first appearance I'm trying to call the field called "audiosound" out of the database and stick it in that area. The audiosound file contains the web path to my audiosound file like... http://www.mydomain.com/ray.mp3

Here is the error message and the first line it bombs on...

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/www/websitesalesman/printtest.php on line 33

Here is line 33

Line 33 <bgsound src="$row[audiosound]" loop="0">

I would be happy to email you the entire code from the page if that will help. ANYTHING I can do to help because this is important to what I am trying to do.

Thanks for your patience and help!

Ray

sks1024

Leave out the double quotes around the variable output and all others

Leave out all double qotes in the message except the ones that start the html and the one that end the html

$message = 

"<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<bgsound src=$row[audiosound] loop=0>
</body>
</html>";

Please email entire code to stansawyer@nc.rr.com

Stan

Weedpacket

Much better (in part because it mantains HTML spec compliance) is the "heredoc" syntax of specifying strings:

$message =  <<<EOF
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
You're free to use apostrophes and
"double apostrophes" without having
to escape them or anything.
<bgsound src="$row[audiosound]" loop="0">
</body>
</html>
EOF;

Using "EOF" is traditional, but it could be any bunch of letters. EOHTML, FOO, FNORD, XYZZY, or WHATEVER. The only thing to keep an eye out for is that they have to be the last thing on their line (except for that semicolon); not even comments are allowed.

mrhappy

I set it up using your <<<EOF recomendation and changed all of my variables that I was trying to call from the database to the

<bgsound src="$row[audiosound]" loop="0"> format.

When I ran the file it sent the email fine but every instance of the $row[dbfilename] disappeared and the email arrived like the following...

It didn't replace the "$row[audiosound]" with the file name, the $row[audiosound] part just disappeared.

What have I done wrong?

I know that the database is being accessed because the fields outside of the $message = <<<EOF EOF; are being filled with db information.

Thanks for trying to help me.

PROBLEM SOLVED====================

Between Stan who spent a LOT of time helping and Weedpacket who added a key piece of the puzzle I got it to work.

Stan had named the search database results as $email_row[filename] and then changed in the body to $row[filename]. I changed all of the fields to $email_row[filenames] and it works perfectly.

THANKS A MILLION TO YOU BOTH FOR HELPING ME OUT! I REALLY APPRECIATE IT.

Maybe in a hundred years of learning I'll be capable of helping you out.

Ray