Setting up a mailer to loop through email addresses posted on a form

[juniper747]

Hello.... I'm trying to set up a shorter email sending script instead of the one below, possibly a "while loop", but I can't seem to figure out how. I have a form where a user may input email addresses (posted variables $contact1 to $contact8) into 8 different input fields.

This is what I have now:

if($contact1 != ""){
$to="$contact1";
$from = "[e-mail]";
$subject = "Message is waiting for you...";

//Begin HTML Email Message
$message = "Hi $firstname,
$userfirstname $userlastname has a message for you!

Click the link below to view.
http://localhost/website/login.php
"; //end of message

$headers = "From: $from\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text\r\n";
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
}

if($contact2 != ""){
$to="$contact2";
$from = "[e-mail]";
$subject = "Message is waiting for you...";

//Begin HTML Email Message
$message = "Hi $firstname,
$userfirstname $userlastname has a message for you!

Click the link below to view.
http://localhost/website/login.php
"; //end of message

$headers = "From: $from\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text\r\n";
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
}

etc... all the way to $contact8, can anyone help me with simplifying this? Thnks,

June

[Derokorian]

Change the field names to contacts[] so that you then have the array $contacts to work with in php, instead of a seperate variable for each field. Than you can do

<?php
foreach($contacts as $contact) {
   if($contact != ""){
      $to="$contact";
      $from = "[e-mail]";
      $subject = "Message is waiting for you...";

  //Begin HTML Email Message
  $message = "Hi $firstname,
  $userfirstname $userlastname has a message for you!

  Click the link below to view.
  http://localhost/website/login.php
  "; //end of message

  $headers = "From: $from\r\n";
  $headers .= "Content-type: text\r\n";
  mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
   }
}

Note i just copied your if and mail area, you could further simplify by building things like from etc before the loop. Also since its a foreach I dont think you have to check if its empty each time but I'm not 100% sure.

[juniper747]

Amazing! Thanks a lot, I'll give it a try...

[juniper747]

Just to be sure, is this what you meant:

    $contacts[1]="contact1";
$contacts[2]="contact2";
$contacts[3]="contact3";
$contacts[4]="contact4";
$contacts[5]="contact5";
$contacts[6]="contact6";
$contacts[7]="contact7";
$contacts[8]="contact8";

foreach($contacts as $contact) {
  if($contact != ""){
  $to="$contact";
  $from = "[e-mail]";
  $subject = "Message is waiting for you...";

  //Begin HTML Email Message
  $message = "Hi $firstname,
  $userfirstname $userlastname has a message for you!

  Click the link below to view.
  [url]http://localhost/website/login.php[/url]
  "; //end of message

  $headers = "From: $from\r\n";
  $headers .= "Content-type: text\r\n";
  mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

}
}

Also, how do you paste the code colored, like yours came out? And I am using a xampp localhost, so I can't really test it out...unless you know of a way?

[Derokorian]

no in your form you would use

<form action="" methoc="post">
Email 1: <input type="text" name="contacts[]" /><br />
Email 2: <input type="text" name="contacts[]" /><br />
Email 3: <input type="text" name="contacts[]" /><br />
Email 4: <input type="text" name="contacts[]" /><br />
<input type="submit" />
</form>

then in your process area/file you could do:

<?php

$contacts = ISSET($_POST['conacts[]']) ? $_POST['conacts[]'] : FALSE

if( !$contacts ) die("no contacts sent");

$from = "[e-mail]";
$subject = "You have a message!";
$body = "$username has sent you a message.";

foreach( $contacts as $contact ) {
   if( mail($contact,$subject,$body,"FROM: $from\n\r") ) {
      echo "Message to $contact successful.<br />";
   } else {
      echo "Message to $contact failed.<br />";
   }
}

?>

To use colored code, you one of the following:

 ... [ /html], [code=php] ... [ /php]  depending on whether there is php in the code. You can also use [code] ... [ /code] however this does not color highlight, it only keeps the indentation. (also note I can't post those without putting a space in the tag, however there is no space inside the tag to make it work.)

[bradgrafelman]

Also note that $POST['contacts[]'] (corrected for spelling) should actually be $POST['contacts'] instead.

Derokorian wrote:

also note I can't post those without putting a space in the tag

You mean like: [noparse]

 ... 

[/noparse]? :p

[juniper747]

Wow, your awesome at making that short! HOwever, I have this small problem because I also need to store the posted emails (contacts) into the database... so before I had:

[Code]
  // Add user info into the database
    $sql = mysql_query("INSERT INTO memberlog (mem_id, title, postdate, contact1, contact2, contact3, contact4, contact5, contact6, contact7, contact8, actualtime)  

    VALUES('$id', '$title', '$postdate', '$contact1', '$contact2', '$contact3', '$contact4', '$contact5', '$contact6', '$contact7', '$contact8', now())")  

    or die (mysql_error());

[/code]

Should I revert to using:
$contacts[1]="contact1";
$contacts[2]="contact2";
$contacts[3]="contact3";
etc...

Or is there a way to get the array into the mysql table?

[bradgrafelman]

You should normalize your DB schema first. Why do you have those eight columns?

[juniper747]

Because I want to store the contact emails that are posted in the form.

I want to store them individually so that i can access them individually, later...

[bradgrafelman]

Okay, but what happens if I want to enter 9 e-mails instead? Would I have to wait until you add another column? What about 90 e-mails?

You might want to search for a basic article or two on DB normalization. An example for bringing your table into at least the first normal form might be to remove all of those columns from the table and instead create an additional table with two columns; mem_id (foreign key) and contact. Then, you'd simply create 1 row per e-mail associated with the form.

[Derokorian]

I think his point is you should have a separate record for each recipient, instead of trying to have multiple recipients in one row (as this is quite the opposite of DB normalization). IE:

mem_id, title, postdate, recipient

and then you would have 8 records only if there are 8 recipients, instead of having empty columns if say you only sent the message to 4 people, then you have 4 empty columns!

shakes fist at brad

[juniper747]

This is a secondary table, I have a separate primary table that stores the mem_id (primary key) along with username, pw, birthday, etc.

The reason I set this secondary table up like this, is because say I am using the emails as a tag to a photo or some object. The photo id would be the primary key in the table, the next column would be the mem_id, the the 8 contacts and so on. And whenever I need to, I can refer back to that photo, along with the (maximum of 8) tags/emails associated to it. Does this make sense or am I completely missing something...

[juniper747]

Ok, you guys are right... I took another look at my db schema, and decided to make a separate table for the contacts, having two columns: mem_id and contacts. I also decided to make even another table showing mem_id and friend_id, to check whether or not the two members are "friends".

But I do not see what the point would be in having a "foreign key". Is that really necessary? Can't I just update each table individually?

Also, my other concern is, if I have 10000 members, and each member has 50 friends... that would mean I would get a table with about 500,000 rows... Do you see this as being a problem, maybe in the future as far as scaling? Or is mysql built to handle many rows?

[johanafm]

juniper747;10979225 wrote:

But I do not see what the point would be in having a "foreign key". Is that really necessary? Can't I just update each table individually?

Not necessary, but this is similar to asking if you need a seat belt to drive a car. You don't, but it's still a good idea. You don't have to specify ON DELETE CASCADE or ON UPDATE CASCADE either. But you can.

Let's say you have 4 users (with ids 1 ... 4). Without foreign key constraints, you might have a member table with entries

user_id  friend_id
1		5		-- user 1 exists, but he's now friends with a non-existent user
6		1		-- a non-existent user is friends with user 1
5		6		-- non-existent user, friends with non-existen user

And what happens when your 5th and 6th members signs up? With foreign key constraints, the entries above would never be able to exist in the first place. Now let's say you do have foreign key constraints and the above (now assumed to be valid) entries. If user 6 is deleted and you have ON DELETE CASCADE, all entries above where either user or friend id is 1 will be deleted.
On the other hand, without cascadin deletes, you would not be able to delete user 1 until you first removed all the above entries where user or friend id is 1.

juniper747;10979225 wrote:

Also, my other concern is, if I have 10000 members, and each member has 50 friends... that would mean I would get a table with about 500,000 rows... Do you see this as being a problem, maybe in the future as far as scaling? Or is mysql built to handle many rows?

[/quote]
If you use indices properly, this is no problem.

[juniper747]

Thanks very much for your great help..... I am beginning to grasp foreign keys. Now my next step is understanding INNER and OUTER JOIN... so I can properly insert the data into the tables. Hope I'm on the right track...

One quick question though... if I am using the foreign/primary key feature to relate member ids, will I even need to use ON UPDATE CASCADE? Since my ids are not supposed to be updated, as they should always be unique and not change, correct?

[bradgrafelman]

juniper747;10979426 wrote:

Since my ids are not supposed to be updated, as they should always be unique and not change, correct?

Data never "should be" inconsistent... and yet sometimes it is. Rule of thumb: add as many constraints as you can think of into the DB schema, rather than leaving it up in the air with a "should be" statement.

[juniper747]

Ok... I changed my db schema, like you suggested. Now I have a table just for contacts, where the first column is mem_id which is foreign key of a members table, and the second column is contacts. I am trying to make the insert like so:

in the php, I have:

foreach($contacts as $contact) {
//add contacts to the database
$sql = mysql_query("INSERT INTO contactlist (contacts) VALUES('$contact'")  

or die (mysql_error());
}

in the form I have:

<tr>
<td><input name="contacts[]" type="text" id="contacts[]" value="<?php print $contacts[0];?>" size="30" maxlength="50" /></td>
<td><input name="contacts[]" type="text" id="contacts[]" value="<?php print $contacts[1];?>" size="30" maxlength="50" /></td>
<td><input name="contacts[]" type="text" id="contacts[]" value="<?php print $contacts[2];?>" size="30" maxlength="50" /></td> 
<td><input name="contacts[]" type="text" id="contacts[]" value="<?php print $contacts[3];?>" size="30" maxlength="50" /></td>
</tr>

I am getting this error (I'm almost sure the error is somewhere in my foreach statement):
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1

[bradgrafelman]

Print out the entire SQL query and post it here.

Also, don't forget to sanitize all user-input before placing into a SQL string, else your code will be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks and/or just plain SQL errors.

[juniper747]

I updated the code a little bit, and corrected a missing parenthesis... My echo statement does not even get a chance to run, before the error comes up.

foreach($contacts as $contact) {
//add contacts to the database
    $sql = mysql_query("INSERT INTO contactlist (mem_id, contacts) VALUES('$id','$contact')")  or die (mysql_error());
    echo "$sql";

Here's the error:
Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (my database.contactlist, CONSTRAINT contactlist_ibfk_4 FOREIGN KEY (post_id) REFERENCES memberlog (post_id) ON DELETE CASCADE)

By the way, I have two foreign keys in the contactlist table: mem_id (which is foreign key to id in members table) and post_id (which is foreign key to post_id in memberlog table; note that in the memberlog table post_id is an auto-increment field)...

[bradgrafelman]

juniper747 wrote:

My echo statement does not even get a chance to run

Of course it doesn't... you told PHP to quit immediately after printing the error.

Why aren't you inserting a value for the post_id field? What data does that field even relate to?