Submitting data in extra fields?

[zebba15]

Hey guys.

Im working on my first website project for my sister and finally managed to get a basic contact form working on the site. The problem is, my hosting company supplied me with the PHP files but I cannot work out how to add extra fields and check boxes into the form.

I currently have three available fields - Name, Email and a text area, but I need to add at least one extra field and three check boxes which are sent to my email in text format (the same way i'm receiving the data now)

mail.php code...

<?php

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

ini_set("sendmail_from", $email);
mail ($to, $subject, $message, $headers, "-f".$email);
header("Location: http://www.example.com/page.html");

?>

and a rough example of the HTML im using...

sendmail.php code...

<form method="post" action="mail.php">

Name:
<input type="text" name="name" />

E-mail:
<input type="text" name="email" />

Comments:
<textarea name="data" cols=40 rows=6></textarea>

<td colspan="2"><input type="submit" /></td><br />

</form>

Basically, I need to add a 'Lift Sharing' page to a Wedding website. Anyone who can offer a lift, enters their details and the data will be displayed for anybody to contact them.

This is literally my first dabble into PHP so I havent got a clue what im doing. Again, the contact form itself is working just fine because my host set it up for me.

Can anyone maybe show me how to create a setup which sends data with 4 fields and 3 check boxes....

Would be very much appreciated, of course 😃

[zebba15]

Mods, any chance you could edit the link and email address in my codes to something a little more generic, please?

[johanafm]

When it comes to the HTML code, you most likely need an input element of type="text" (a textarea element would also work. it depends on if you need single or multiline and how much textual input you want to deal with) and then 3 input elements of type="checkbox".

The name attribute for any form element (such as inputs) corresponds to the array element index in PHP. If your HTML code has <input type="text" name="whatever" /> and this is submitted to a PHP script, you will find an array element with the data from this form element either in $GET, or $POST: i.e. $POST['whatever'] or $GET['whatever']. Which one it ends up in depends on wether your form's method attribute is "get" or "post".

The PHP code in use doesn't use $GET or $POST, but rather uses $REQUEST which may or may note include either one of those. You'd have to check php.ini to know. Moreover, if both GET and POST are put into request and both post and get contains the exact same array element index, one will overwrite the other. You'd also have to check php.ini to find out which one overwrites the other. Two reasons for which I really don't like using $REQUEST.

Anyway, just see how the code for "name" works.
HTML code (form element): <input type="text" name="name" />
And then see how this is used in the PHP script:
$_REQUEST['name'] ...

And do the same thing with your new form elements.