form to email validation

wallm · May 9, 2006

Hi, I'm am absolute novice at PHP.
I want to put some PHP server side validation in the code for Page 2 so that a valid email must be entered, and so that the fields aren't empty. If they are then a message will display saying something like 'please try again'.

Can anyone help with the code?

Page 1

<form action="storage/FormToEmail.php" method="post" style="margin:5px;">
Name:<br /><input name="Name" type="text" id="Name" value="Your name">
<br />
Email:<br /><input name="Email" type="text" id="Email" value="Your email">
<br />
Comment:<br /><textarea name="Comments" cols="22" rows="4" id="Comments">Enter your message here to contact us</textarea>
<br />
<input type="submit">
</form>

Page 2

<?php

$my_email = "me@mywebsite.com";
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] != "POST"){exit;}

$disallowed_name = array(':',';',"'",'"','=','(',')','{','}','@');

foreach($disallowed_name as $value)
{

if(stristr($_POST[Name],$value)){header("location: $_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]");exit;}

}

$disallowed_email = array(':',';',"'",'"','=','(',')','{','}');

foreach($disallowed_email as $value)
{

if(stristr($_POST,$value)){header("location: $_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]");exit;}

}

$message = "";

while(list($key,$value) = each($_POST)){if(!(empty($value))){$set=1;}$message = $message . "$key: $value\n\n";} if($set!==1){header("location: $_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]");exit;}

$message = $message . "";
$message = stripslashes($message);

$subject = "Visitor Comments";
$headers = "From: " . $_POST['Email'] . "\n" . "Return-Path: " . $_POST['Email'] . "\n" . "Reply-To: " . $_POST['Email'] . "\n";

mail($my_email,$subject,$message,$headers);

?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">[/URL]
<html>
<head>
<title>Test</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link href="includes/stylesheet.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>

<object>
<h1>Thank you <?php print stripslashes($_POST['Name']); ?>.</h1>
<h2>Your message has been sent and will be replied to if necessary.</h2>
</object>

</body>
</html>

sleipnir214 · May 9, 2006

If you are going to want to give your users a meaningful error message and a chance to correct their input, I strongly recommend that you combine the HTML and script into one script.

Generally in situations like this, I use a script of the form:

Code:

<?php

if (/* fields from the form this script produces were submitted */)
{
   //validate input

   if (/* input validated correctly */)
   {
      //tell the user so and/or send the user
      //to another script.
   }
   else
   {
      //output form again, with error messages and with
      //fields pre-populated with the previously-input
      //values
   }
}
else
{
   //output blank form
}
?>

As far as validating an email address goes, you might check out faq434-2408 .

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions! TANSTAAFL!

wallm · May 9, 2006

thank you.. that's very helpful.

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form to email validation

wallm

Programmer

sleipnir214

Programmer

wallm

Programmer

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