[RESOLVED] Redirecting Form Error Output

[ridgedale]

Hi, I was wondering if someone might be able to point me in the right direction.

I've got 4 files I'm working with:
contact.php
contproc.php
missing.php
thanks.php

When a user goes to the contact.php and completes the form and submits it, having filled in all the fields, he/she is redirected to the thanks.php page as I want.
However, when the form is submitted with required field information missing the user is redirected to a completely blank missing.php page!
The original code in the contproc.php file that did successfully generate the error information I'm looking to redirect was:

if($error_msg != ""){
	echo "You didn't fill in these required fields:<br>"
	.nl2br($error_msg) .'<br>Please <a href="javascript:history.back()">return</a> to the previous page and try again.';
	exit;

The resulting error page appears unstyled and shows nothing relating to the original website but does provide a working link back to the form before it was submitted.
If I remove the php error display code from the missing.php the browser displays the missing.php correctly albeit with the error information missing.
Any help with this would be much appreciated.

My current code for the contproc.php and missing.php files is as follows:

contproc.php

<? 
// This is the beginning of the PHP code 

session_start();

$surname  = $_POST['surname'];
$forename = $_POST['forename'];
$title    = $_POST['title'];
$postcode = $_POST['postcode'];
$country  = $_POST['country'];
$phone    = $_POST['phone'];
$email    = $_POST['email'];
$arrival  = $_POST['arrival'];
$depart   = $_POST['depart'];
$single   = $_POST['single'];
$double   = $_POST['double'];
$smoking  = $_POST['smoking'];
$comments = $_POST['comments'];
$error_msg = "";
$msg = "";

if(!$surname){
	$error_msg .= "Your surname \n";
}
if($surname){
	$msg .= "Surname: \t $surname \n";
}

if(!$forename){
	$error_msg .= "Your first name \n";
}
if($forename){
	$msg .= "First Name: \t $forename \n";
}

if($title){
	$msg .= "Title: \t $title \n";
}

if(!$postcode){
	$error_msg .= "Your postcode \n";
}
if($postcode){
	$msg .= "Postcode: \t $postcode \n";
}

if(!$country){
	$error_msg .= "Your country \n";
}
if($country){
	$msg .= "Country: \t $country \n";
}

if(!$phone){
	$error_msg .= "Your phone \n";
}
if($phone){
	$msg .= "Phone: \t $phone \n";
}

if(!$email){
	$error_msg .= "Your email \n";
}
if($email){
	if(!eregi("^[a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9\._\-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}", $email)){
		echo "\n<br>That is not a valid email address.  Please <a href=\"javascript:history.back()\">return</a> to the previous page and try again.\n<br>";
		exit;
	}			
	$msg .= "Email: \t $email \n";
}

if($arrival){
	$msg .= "Arrival Date: \t $arrival \n";
}

if($depart){
	$msg .= "Departure Date: \t $depart \n";
}

if($single){
	$msg .= "Single: \t $single \n";
}

if($double){
	$msg .= "Double: \t $double \n";
}

if($smoking){
	$msg .= "Smoking: \t $smoking \n";
}

if($comments){
	$msg .= "Comments: \t $comments \n";
}
$sender_email="";

if(!isset($name)){
	if($name == ""){
		$sender_name="Web Customer";
	}
}else{
	$sender_name=$name;
}
if(!isset($email)){
	if($email == ""){
		$sender_email="[e-mail]";
	}
}else{
	$sender_email=$email;
}
if($error_msg != ""){
	$_SESSION['error_msg'] = $error_msg;
	header("Location: ../missing.php"); /* Redirect browser */
	exit();
}
$mailheaders  = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$mailheaders .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$mailheaders .= "From: $sender_name <$sender_email>\r\n";
$mailheaders .= "Reply-To: $sender_email <$sender_email>\r\n"; 
mail("[e-mail]","Grove House Website Enquiry",stripslashes($msg), $mailheaders);
header("Location: http://www.thegrovehousehotel.co.uk/thanks.php"); /* Redirect browser */
//This is the end of the PHP code
?>

missing.php

<?php 

session_start();

include "header.php"; 

?>

<table width="100%" border="0">
<tr><td align="center" valign="top"><table  width="600" valign="top" border="0" cellpadding="5"><tr>				
<td width="110" valign="top" ><?php include "navbar.php"; ?></td>			
<td width="461" rowspan="2"  valign="top"><h1 class="h1-main">Missing Form Information</h1>

<p align="left">You didn't fill in these required fields:</p>

<?php

// If the error session variable is set, a message is to be displayed.
if (isset($_SESSION['error_msg'])) {

// Display it.
 echo "<p align="left">{$_SESSION['error_msg']}</p>";

 // And forget it.
 unset($_SESSION['error_msg']);
}
?>

<p align="left">Please <a href="javascript:history.back()">return</a> to the previous page and try again.</p>

<p align="left">&nbsp;</p>
<p align="center">&nbsp;</p>
<hr><p>&nbsp;</p></td></tr></table></td></tr></table>
<?php include "footer.php"; ?>

[bradgrafelman]

Why even have an error page? Why not just put your form output in a function, and if there is an error, you simply print an error message and then call the form function again, so it re-displays the form on the same page. That way, you can even fill in all the fields that they had originally filled in.

[ridgedale]

Thanks for your reply, Brad.

I'm just trying to keep things simple at the moment so that I can get a site that has been created by someone else with a fixed page depth design working. Therefore I can't afford that added extra depth an error message would generate.

Is it not possible to redirect an error message to another page?

It would be useful to know how to do what you are suggesting for future reference, though. Do you have an example?

[bradgrafelman]

Here's an example of what I mean...

<?PHP

function showForm($error_message=NULL) {
	if($error_message != NULL)
		$error_message = "<p align=\"left\">$error_message</p>";

?><form method="post">
(Your form here)
Here's an example input field that will fill in values they had previously filled in.
Name: <input type="text" name="name" value="<?PHP echo @$_POST['name']; ?>" /><br>
Sex: <select name="sex">
	<option value="male" <?PHP echo ((@$_POST['sex'] == 'male') ? 'selected' : ''); ?>>Male</option>
	<option value="female" <?PHP echo ((@$_POST['sex'] == 'female') ? 'selected' : ''); ?>>Female</option>
	</select>
etc.
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit Form" />
</form>
<?PHP
}

if(!isset($_POST['submit'])) { // give your submit button a name as I did above

showForm();

} else {

$error_msg = '';

$surname  = $_POST['surname']; 
// etc.

if(!$surname)
	$error_msg .= 'Your surname<br />';

// etc.

if($error_msg != '') {
	showForm($error_msg);
	exit;
}
}
?>

EDIT: I used some weird structures in PHP you may not have been exposed to (the ternary operator, for example). If you want to know more about a part of my code example, just point it out and I (or any other board member that comes along) can explain it in English!

[ridgedale]

Brad,

Thanks for that example. Just to let you know, I figured out what to do with my existing files to achieve what I was looking for:

In each for the files contproc.php and missing.php I removed the following line of code:

session_start(); 

Then in contproc.php I replaced:

if($error_msg != ""){ 
    $_SESSION['error_msg'] = $error_msg; 
    header("Location: ../missing.php"); /* Redirect browser */ 
    exit(); 
} 

with:

if($error_msg != ""){
	include("missing.php");
	exit;
}

And in missing.php I replaced:

<?php 

// If the error session variable is set, a message is to be displayed. 
if (isset($_SESSION['error_msg'])) { 

// Display it. 
echo "<p align="left">{$_SESSION['error_msg']}</p>"; 

// And forget it. 
unset($_SESSION['error_msg']); 
} 
?>

with:

<?php echo nl2br("<p align=\"left\">$error_msg</p>"); ?>

Everything is working fine now.
Thanks again for your help it was much appreciated.