how to create a variable from an html textarea

keenboy

I am building a web based application that allows me to send a monthly newsletter by e-mail to subscribers.

The application selects subscribers from a MySQL database depending on their category and sends an e-mail to them.

At the moment it works fine, but only in text format.

I would like to know how I pass the contents of my text area which is used in the e-mail form to a php variable so that I can convert it to html using the html_mime_mail stuff.

Unless someone knows an easier way to send html code from within my text area so that it's interpreted properly by e-mail clients.

I know that some clients don't display html that well, I just want to use very basic tags.

Thanks

garblar

the contents of a textarea should be passed just like the contents of any form element.

keenboy

Yep it is.

The problem I have now is being able to set this variable to html so I can pop html tags into this textarea and they display as an html e-mail.

I'm trying to use htmlMimeMail to do it.

Here's my code:

<?php
include("dbconnection.php");
   if (!isset($_POST['submit'])):
?>

<html>
<head>
</head>

</head>

<body>

<form method="post" action="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>">
<table align="center" bgcolor="#D6DEE7" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td align="center">
<b><h2>MAILING LIST ADMIN</h2></b>


Send message:
<select name="to" size="1" style="background-color: #F7F7F7">
<!--<option selected value="all">Entire list-->
<option value="notall">By Category
</select>
<br><br>
Country:
<select name="country" size="5">
<OPTION value="retailer">retailer
<OPTION value="supplier">supplier
<OPTION value="staff">staff
</select>
<br><br>
Title or Subject: <input name="subject" type=text maxlength=100 size=40>
<br><br>
Message:
<textarea wrap name="message" rows=10 cols=45></textarea>
<br><br>
<input type=submit name="submit" value="SUBMIT">

</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</body>
</html>

<?php else:

  $to = $_POST['to'];
  $subject = $_POST['subject'];
  $message = $_POST['message'];
  $country = $_POST['country'];

  if ("all" == $to) {
   $x = 1;
   $hold = 50; // quantity of emails sent before 3 sec delay
   $emails = mysql_query("SELECT email FROM details");
   while ($sendemail = mysql_fetch_array($emails)) {
   $email = $sendemail["email"];
   mail($email, $subject,
   $message, "From:Your name <you@whatever.com>");

   $x++;
    if($x == $hold) { // When $x is equal to $hold, a 3 sec delay will occur avoiding php to timeout
    sleep(3);
    $x = 0;
    }
   } // end of while loop
  } else {
   $bycountry = mysql_query("SELECT email FROM details WHERE category = '$country'");
   while ($countmail = mysql_fetch_array($bycountry)) {
   $email = $countmail["email"];
   $okemail = mail($email, $subject,
   $message, "From:Alex Howe <alex@*******.co.uk>");

   $x++;
    if($x == $hold) { // When $x is equal to $hold, a 3 sec delay will occur avoiding php to timeout
    sleep(3);
    $x = 0;
    }
   } // end of while loop
  }
?>
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
SUCCESS!
</body>
</html>
<?php endif; ?>

aduljr

you need to send a multipart email in order to send it as text and html. This I found to be a terrible PITA to properly do it.

I used a class called swiftmailer

It is fairly simple to use and email that is created from it will follow the proper standards. It handles HTML, Text, attachments, and embedded images.

You should be able to take the same variable and pop it into both types without having to add tags to it.