email form and redirect based upon a drop-down menu

terabytes

Hi!

I'm a total php noob...
this is my first project.

I'm not looking for anyone to "give" me the answers, just a nudge in the proper direction would be great!

I need to create a form that will email form fields, and then redirect to a specific page based upon a selection from a drop-down menu.

Best case, the submit would happen with a click on the drop-down menu selection instead of a "submit" button.

If somebody could just direct me to a resource that might give me a clue.

I just found this forum, and I'm looking forward to doing research here and possibly contributing once I know what I'm doing.

thanks in advance!
Tera

bradgrafelman

There are many different ways of sending e-mails from PHP, and there are many different ways to compose a message based on form fields submitted, so it's hard to give an exact permutation of the two; what you end up with is going to largely depend on how you want to go about solving those two problems.

terabytes wrote:
Best case, the submit would happen with a click on the drop-down menu selection instead of a "submit" button.

While that's a client-side scripting question, the simplest implementation I can think of would be like:

<select name="foo" onchange="this.form.submit()">

sneakyimp

to submit data to php and mail it somewhere, make a form. Choose either 'get' or 'post' as your method. For action, specify the php file that you want to send the data to:

<form method="post" action="form_handler.php">
<input type="text" name="my_input">
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit">
</form>

And then make the php file to handle it. since i specified 'form_handler.php' as my action in the form tag, i would create a file named form_handler.php. Since I didn't specify a fully qualified web address with http://somesite.com/form_handler.php, my php file should live in the same directory as my html form on the web server. All the inputs in my form should have their values sent to a variable called $POST. If I had chosen method "get", it would be $GET.

if (isset($_POST['submit'])) {
  echo 'You entered ' . $_POST['my_input'];
} else {
  echo 'no form data was submitted!';
}

If you want to send mail in PHP, you can see the examples in the documentation on the [man]mail[/man] function which is built-in in PHP. That's a decent way to start, but it's generally better to use Pear::Mail or PHPMailer as these code projects allow you to connect to a mail server and create attachments and stuff. There's more info in this thread.

terabytes

ok... thanks for everyones help so far...

I'm going to try this out, and I'll get back to you with any issues I have...
(and I'm sure I'll have issues...)

thanks!
Tera

terabytes

ok... here's where I am...(a simple example)

html>
<form action='form_handler.php' method='POST'>
	<input type='text' name='name'>
	<input type='text' name='company'>
	<input type='text' name='address'>
	<input type='text' name='city'>
	<input type='text' name='state'>
	<input type='text' name='zip'>
	<input type='submit' value='Click'>
</form>
</html>

<?php

$name = $_POST['name'];
$name = $_POST['company'];
$name = $_POST['address'];
$name = $_POST['city'];
$name = $_POST['state'];
$name = $_POST['zip'];

?>

I'd like to redirect the user to a page based upon the state that was entered (I.E. texas.htm for example) (lets not worry about error checking at this point, misspelled states, etc) I'm trying to learn the basics here in their simplest forms)
I'll probably use a drop-down menu for the state choice to alleviate any issues there anyway...

So now I have my variables, how to I utilize my 'state' field for a redirect to "state.htm" on submit?

thanks in advance!
Tera

sneakyimp

Well this code is mostly useless:

<?php

$name = $_POST['name'];
$name = $_POST['company'];
$name = $_POST['address'];
$name = $_POST['city'];
$name = $_POST['state'];
$name = $_POST['zip'];

?>

All it does is assign one variable, $name, different values from your form.

I'm not sure what you plan to do with your data, but you should probably do that in form_handler.php and when you are finished storing it or emailing it or whatever, then you can redirect based on the content of your 'state' input like this code, which assumes that you have an html page for each state that matches the value entered for state. E.g., if the person enters 'TX' for their state, then you redirect to TX.html

// you should probably check this value to make sure it's ok
// otherwise, some jerk might be able to enter 'http://viagra.com' as their state
$state = $_POST['state'];

header('location:' . $state . '.html');
exit;

One thing you should always do in your code is validate user input. Write code to check the values entered and make sure they are what they should be.

terabytes

yeah, sorry, was in a rush, lets try again....
(using a drop down menu for the state field)

<html>
<form action='form_handler.php' method='POST'>
<input type='text' name='name'>
<input type='text' company='company'>
<input type='text' address='address'>
<input type='text' city='city'>
<select size="1" name="state">
<option selected>Choose Your state</option>
<option value="Alabama">Alabama</option>
<option value="Alaska">Alaska</option>
<option value="Arizona">Arizona</option>
<option value="Arkansas">Arkansas</option>
<option value="California">California</option>
<option value="Colorado">Colorado</option>
<option value="Connecticut">Connecticut</option>
<option value="Delaware">Delaware</option>
<option value="District of Columbia">District of Columbia</option>
<option value="Florida">Florida</option>
<option value="Georgia">Georgia</option>
<option value="Hawaii">Hawaii</option>
<option value="Idaho">Idaho</option>
<option value="Illinois">Illinois</option>
<option value="Indiana">Indiana</option>
<option value="Iowa">Iowa</option>
<option value="Kansas">Kansas</option>
<option value="Kentucky">Kentucky</option>
<option value="Louisiana">Louisiana</option>
<option value="Maine">Maine</option>
<option value="Maryland">Maryland</option>
<option value="Massachusetts">Massachusetts</option>
<option value="Michigan">Michigan</option>
<option value="Minnesota">Minnesota</option>
<option value="Mississippi">Mississippi</option>
<option value="Missouri">Missouri</option>
<option value="Montana">Montana</option>
<option value="Nebraska">Nebraska</option>
<option value="Nevada">Nevada</option>
<option value="New Hampshire">New Hampshire</option>
<option value="New Jersey">New Jersey</option>
<option value="New Mexico">New Mexico</option>
<option value="New York">New York</option>
<option value="North Carolina">North Carolina</option>
<option value="North Dakota">North Dakota</option>
<option value="Ohio">Ohio</option>
<option value="Oklahoma">Oklahoma</option>
<option value="Oregon">Oregon</option>
<option value="Pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</option>
<option value="Rhode Island">Rhode Island</option>
<option value="South Carolina">South Carolina</option>
<option value="South Dakota">South Dakota</option>
<option value="Tennessee">Tennessee</option>
<option value="Texas">Texas</option>
<option value="Utah">Utah</option>
<option value="Vermont">Vermont</option>
<option value="Virginia">Virginia</option>
<option value="Washington">Washington</option>
<option value="West Virginia">West Virginia</option>
<option value="Wisconsin">Wisconsin</option>
<option value="Wyoming">Wyoming</option>
<option value="Not In USA">Not In USA</option>
<input type='text' name='zip'>
<input type='submit' value='Click'>
</form>
</html>

<?php

$name = $_POST['name'];
$company = $_POST['company'];
$address = $_POST['address'];
$city = $_POST['city'];
$state = $_POST['state'];
$zip = $_POST['zip'];

?>

I DO understand about checking my input, I'm simply attempting to get the process under control.

thanks for your help!