[RESOLVED] Forms, emailer and from headers...

[orinb]

I know there have been a few posts regarding this subject, but as a complete newbie to scripting, i've been trying to put something together that works.

I finally have a script that is doing mostly what i need it to do. It actually sends the form data! However, when i receive the e-mail, the from header doesn't contain the e-mail address typed into the form so it's simpler to reply.

I've put together a few example scripts to create the script i'm using, so some of the code may actually be irrelevant or ugly.... and trying to implement the server hosts parameters too...

Anyway, Basic HTML form:

<form action="emailform_testing2.php" method="post" name="contact" id="contact">
                <label>Name:</label><br>
                <input type="text" name="Name" size="30"><br>
				<label>Company:</label><br>
                <input type="text" name="Company" size="30"><br>
                 <label>Telephone:</label><br>
                 <input type="text" name="Telephone" size="30"><br>
                <label>E-mail:</label><br>
                <input type="text" name="Email" size="30"><br>
                <label>Message:</label><br><textarea name="Message" cols="50" rows="5"></textarea>
                <br>
				<p id="buttons"><input type="submit" value="Send Message" ><input type="reset" value="Clear Form" ></p></p>
              </form>

PHP script:

<?php

$EmailTo = "[e-mail]";
$Subject = "Web Contact Enquiry";
$Name = Trim(stripslashes($_POST['Name'])); 
$Company = Trim(stripslashes($_POST['Company'])); 
$Telephone = Trim(stripslashes($_POST['Telephone'])); 
$Email_from = Trim(stripslashes($_POST['Email'])); 
$Message = Trim(stripslashes($_POST['Message'])); 

// email body text
$Body = "";
$Body .= "Name: ";
$Body .= $Name;
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "Company: ";
$Body .= $Company;
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "Telephone: ";
$Body .= $Telephone;
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "e-mail: ";
$Body .= $Email_from;
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "Message: ";
$Body .= $Message;
$Body .= "\n";

//Create header that puts email in From box along with name in parentheses and sends bcc to alternate address
$from='From: '. $Email_from . "(" . $Name . ")" . "\r\n" . 'Bcc: [e-mail]' . "\r\n";

// send email
ini_set("sendmail_from", $from); 
$success = mail($EmailTo, $Subject, $Body, "-f".$from);

// redirect to success page 
if ($success){
  print "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;URL=ok.htm\">";
}
else{
  print "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;URL=error.htm\">";
}
?>

So... my question is, does this do what i think it's suppossed to do and add the email input from the form to the from header allowing me to reply directly to the e-mail? I have a feeling i maybe confusing things with the $Email_from and the $from bits.

My next step is sorting out validation, but i want to get the basics right first.

[johanafm]

E-mail addresses are on the form "name <address>", not "address (name)"

[orinb]

johanafm;10936178 wrote:

E-mail addresses are on the form "name <address>", not "address (name)"

Thanks for that... well blind copying examples isn't always the best way :-)

Ok, i've fixed that. I now see the header in the bottom of the internet headers on the received mail, but the from header is written "-ffrom:" I know i have to ad the -f bit to the code as per the hosting requirements for spam protection, but i don't get why it doesn't show it in my e-mail? Am i missing something?

[bradgrafelman]

There's a couple of things wrong with what you tried. For one, the e-mail headers (e.g. "From: xxx" or "BCC: xxx") belong in the 4th parameter of the mail() function call.

The 5th parameter of the mail() function allows you to specify additional parameters that PHP should use when invoking the MTA on the system. For example, most MTA's have an "-f<from_email>" parameter you must add to specify a valid from address. I believe this is what your host requires. Note that this is not an e-mail header. Also note that it doesn't take the same form as the "From:" e-mail header.

Likewise, the "sendmail_from" PHP directive expects an e-mail address, not a set of e-mail headers (which is what you're supplying to it).

Also, some other thoughts:

• Why are you using [man]stripslashes/man on incoming data? If incoming data automatically has backslashes inserted as escape characters, you probably have the dreaded magic_quotes_gpc directive enabled. You should make every effort to see that this directive is disabled rather than trying to reverse its effects in random locations throughout your site.

• You don't check if there was any data POST'ed to this form; if the various search engines crawled this page, you'd get a blank e-mail for every single hit from every single crawler/bot. (Obviously, this also applies to humans who refresh, bookmark, etc. this page.)

• No CAPTCHA? In this day and age, a rudimentary CAPTCHA (at the very least) is a must. I know you said you were a "complete newbie," but I still wanted to make this point so you'll know what you have yet to learn.

• orinb wrote:

  the from header doesn't contain the e-mail address typed into the form so it's simpler to reply.

  Actually, that's good. You should never place a user-submitted e-mail address in the "From" header of an e-mail; this header should always be a valid e-mail address on your domain. Otherwise, you're likely to get yourself flagged as an open-relay/spam server and blacklisted from many e-mail servers across the globe automatically.

  Perhaps you should look into what the "Reply-To" header can be used for. 🙂

• To better convince many mail servers / spam guardian software out there, you should look into building a more robust set of headers for e-mails you send out. Some examples would be: Content-Type, MIME-Version, etc. (You might also look into setting up an SPF record for your domain, assuming you have one and plan to send out automated e-mails with the best success of making it through spam filters.)

• Is there a reason you spaced out the code for $Body so much? Personally, one of the following would seem like a more human-friendly way of declaring the variable (meaning that it'd be easier to read/interpret/edit if you or someone else revisited this script a month from now):

  // email body text
  $Body = "Name: $Name\n";
  			. "Company: $Company\n";
  			. "Telephone: $Telephone\n";
  			. "e-mail: $Email_from\n";
  			. "Message: $Message\n";

  or

  // email body text 
  $Body = "Name: $Name
  Company: $Company
  Telephone: $Telephone
  e-mail: $Email_from
  Message: $Message
  ";

• Rather than outputting a META tag on a very, very malformed HTML document, why not just use [man]header/man to send an actual redirect header? Something like:

  header('Location: /ok.htm');

[orinb]

Thank you for the reply, there's a ton of useful help in there. As i said in my original post, cobbling together examples isn't the best way to proceed, when you really aren't sure exactly what the functions do! Your plain explanations have come after a week of trawling books and searches.

I wanted to get the basis of the script working first, i'm still working on captcha and validation options. This is all proving to be as complex as i feared :-)

Thanks again, I'll keep trying.

[bradgrafelman]

I realized some of the concepts I touched on are much more abstract than just PHP coding/syntax, but they're definitely something you should at least be aware of even if you can't explain them or even implement them yet. 🙂

Also, sending mail is definitely a complex/involved task - there's no good one-liner way of going about it. As you're changing things around in your script above, however, make sure you head on over to the PHP manual page for the [man]mail/man function and give it a good read (especially the Examples section).