Sending confirmation email.

[pulp25]

Hi,

I am trying to find the syntax to write code that sends a confirmation email in the final stage of ordering. I'm also trying to make the program send the email to the address the user supplied in an earlier stage of the checkout process, this email address is stored in the mysql database 'email'.

Here is what I have so far. I would rather the code was not in an if statement(because I'm allready putting it in a seperate if statement. I'm also not sure of the syntax in the $to variable (where the address is stored):

$to = ($row['email']);
$subject = "Hi!";
$body = "Hi,\n\nHow are you?";
if (mail($to, $subject, $body)) {
  echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");
 } else {
  echo("<p>Message delivery failed...</p>");
 }

Here is where I am putting the email code(so you can see why I would rather it not be a seperate if statement:

if ($approved == 'Y') {

// Send an email.

$to = ($row['email']);
$subject = "Hi!";
$body = "Hi,\n\nHow are you?";
if (mail($to, $subject, $body)) {
  echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");
 } else {
  echo("<p>Message delivery failed...</p>");
 }

echo 'thank you for your order'

} else {
	echo 'your order could not be place'
}

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[NogDog]

You'll probably need to use the 4th parameter, "additional headers", at a minimum to add the "From:" email address. Look at Example 1036 from the on-line documentation.

You also might want to look into using the PHPMailer Class, especially if you want to send attachments, HTML text, etc.

[pulp25]

Thanks NogDog exactly what I was looking for. Now the code does send an email every time; but, I need it to dynamically send it to whoever just got finished checking out. I've been trying different things but can't get it.

I've tried:

$email = $row['email'];
$to      = $email;
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
$to      = 'row["email"]';
///////////////////////////////////////////////
$email_to=$_POST['email'];
$to      = $email_to;
//////////////////////////////////////////
///////////////The variablen is always put into this:
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

As you can tell i'm very new at this. Can someone please tell me what I'm missing?

I think I'm close just slightly off with exact syntax/ exact clarity of how this works.

[pulp25]

Ok i feel really dumb now. I found the tutorial for this problem on this site, but still can't get it to work. Here is as close as I've come, but it still doesn't work.

$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: [e-mail]' . "\r\n" .
   'Reply-To: [e-mail]' . "\r\n" .
   'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();

mail($_POST['email'], $subject, $message, $headers);

I was trying to troubleshoot this to see what, if any value is being passed through to the $post['email'] by tyring print $post['email'] but this does nothing as well.

Does anyone else know how i might troubleshoot this?

[leatherback]

Hi,

what exactly do you mean to say with "this email address is stored in the mysql database 'email'. "

Do you:
- Have a database called email, with tables, one of which holds a field to retrieve it from?
- Have a table called email with one field for the email?
- Have a database, with tables, one of the tables has a field called email?

In general, you will need to connect to the database (Which you know how to do, as you stored the information)
Then:

// Set up the query to send to the database
$query = "select EMAIL_COLUMN from EMAIL_TABLE where CUSTOMER=CURRENTCUSTOMER";

// debugging only; remove once working
echo $query;

$result = mysql_query($query) or die('Stupid me: '.mysql_error());
if($result)
  {
  // Start the email process
  while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
    {
    $to = row['EMAILCOLUMN'];
    // get whatever else you need
    }
  // Do your mail sending here
}

Obviously, you'll need to put in the right column names. Also, I do no tknow how you keep track of the current customer, presumably through a stored record ID in a session or something.