Please help with form/passing variable

NewDog

I am very much the newbie, but am trying to do what I've read should be pretty simple - but obvioulsy I am screwing it up.

I am trying to use a form that users can send an email message to selected users from a drop down list that is populated from a database.

I can get the list populated, but then I cannot get the variable passed to the next page or recognized in the mail function - I am not sure which. I am just trying to get a very simple test validated before I move forward.

Here is my first page

<?php

// Database connection
$conn = mysql_connect(hostname, username, password);
$db = mysql_select_db("database");

// Query for drop-down
$list = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY field1 ASC, field2 DESC");

echo "<form method=\"POST\" action=\"testmail.php\">\n";
echo "<select name=\"Address_to\">\n";
while ($row = @mysql_fetch_assoc($list))
{
echo "<option value=\"$row[field1]\">$row[field2]</option>\n";
}

echo "</select>\n";

echo "<input name=\"msg\" type=\"text\" value=$msg>";

echo "<input type=\"submit\" value=\"SELECT\">\n";
echo "</form>\n";
?>

Here is my second page: (testmail.php)

<?php

$Address_to = $POST['Address_to'];
$msg = $POST['msg'];

mail($Address_to, "Test Mail", $msg);

I am not sure if I need to do this in 2 pages or not. I did not know if the $Address_to variable could be assigned without it since PHP is server-side. Please help with any suggestions. I am nost sure if I even need to use a form to accomplish this.

PLEASE HELP - THANKS !!!

blindeddie

to make sure your variables are getting passed to the next page, echo the variables to see the output. Are you getting any kind of error message, if you are, post it here. If you are getting no errors, I would check the php.ini file to make sure that the IP address for the SMTP server is correct.

dalecosp

<?php 

$Address_to = $_POST['Address_to']; 
$msg = $_POST['msg']; 

echo $msg;                       // this is Eddie's suggestion,
echo "\n".$Address_to;    // echo the values...are they there?

/***************************
//Alternately, you could do this...
if (!$Address_to) { echo "no TO variable!"; }
if (!$Address_to=="") { echo "blank TO variable!"; }
 //and so on, and so on
*************************/

$success=mail($Address_to, "Test Mail", $msg); 

if ($success) {
        echo "Mail Sent!";
        }
else {
      echo "The problem is in sending the mail!";
       }
?>

NewDog

🙂 Success !!

Thank you for your help !! It is working just fine now. I have a couple of follow-up questions.

1) How can I exclude null/blank entries in the database from the drop down list?

2) Is it possible for the user to select and then send to multiple email addresses from the drop down ??? - what function could I use?

3) Is it possible to verify the sender's address and then send a copy of the email to the sender (or use a checkbox if the sender wants one - I think I can figure out the checkbox issue).

Thanks - first time I used this forum and was amazed at the quick and helpful repsonses.

matt_4013

Hi NewDog!

1) How can I exclude null/blank entries in the database from the drop down list?

Just exclude them from your query! I use this:


$sql = 'SELECT concat(\'\n\t<option value="\',email,\'">\',name,\'</option>\') AS options FROM table WHERE email <> ""';

$result = mysql_query($sql, $db) or die(mysql_error());

echo "\n<select name=\"email\">";
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {

echo $row['options'];

}

echo "\n</select>";

2) Is it possible for the user to select and then send to multiple email addresses from the drop down ??? - what function could I use?

It certainly is possible, and it's not particularly hard, either!

In your html, you need to do 3 things. First of all, take out all value attributes from your <option> tags. Secondly, you need to set the select name to an array, like this: <select name="select[]">, and finally you need to give the select tag 2 more attributes, multiple and size, so it will end up looking like this:

<form action="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>" method="post">
<select name="email[]" multiple="multiple" size="5">
<option>Value1</option>
<option>Value2</option>
<option>Value3</option>
<option>Value4</option>
</select>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="go">
</form>

Then, after you've done this to the html, you would just set your $Address_to like so:

unset($Address_to);
foreach($_POST['email'] as $k=>$v) {

$Address_to .= $v.";";
}

Pretty easy, huh?!? 🙂

3) Is it possible to verify the sender's address and then send a copy of the email to the sender (or use a checkbox if the sender wants one - I think I can figure out the checkbox issue).

If by verify you want to physically check if that address exists, then no, it's not possible, unless you have a database of every known email address 😉 However, you can check the format to make sure that it's correct. I use this regular expression that I wrote:

^{[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)*@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)+$}

You use this with the ereg function like so:

$email_regex = "^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+(\.[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)*@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)+$";

if(ereg($email_regex, $email)) {

echo "VALID!";
} else {

echo "INVALID";
}

I would suggest you don't blindly use that without understanding it, but instead read up on POSIX regular expressions. You might also want to read up on PCRE regular expressions, because they can sometimes be much more powerful and efficient 🙂

Then, all you have to do is send another mail like you're doing, using the sender's address 🙂

Hope that helps,
Matt