Basic PHP & Forms

Question

Right, i'm new to PHP and mySQL, but i've got a few questions that i hope some of you guys can answer because this is confusing me right now.

(I'll still try to read up more on google to see if i can find any answers whilst this is going on, so if i find any, i'll post my own answers up here as well)

1. I want a feedback form on my site. I'm looking at the PHP Email Forms but i'm kind of confused here --

On the API, it says that for someone to send an email to me, the php script needs to enter and send this code:

mail(to,subject,message,headers,parameters)

However, i realise there is no "from" argument inside this function. Why is this so? How will i be able to find out the email of the other person and be able to reply to him/her via my own email after receiving such a feedback request?

I'm also reading on parts where people include the sender's email into the "headers" argument itself. How will a mail system gather that there is a sender's email if i include this inside the "header" argument? (I'm asking this part because my webhost provides an auto-reply before i reply, and i want it to be able to recognize that the sender's email is the email that the system should auto-reply to)

Would it be easier to just put a mailto:[email protected] link on the webpage?

I think that's pretty much all i'm trying to find out for now, i have more complex questions but i think i'll try to solve the easier ones first.

• Patrick Moore: From is set within the headers parameter.
• Shubham: Don't use "mailto: ". Modern browsers do have mailto handlers but most of the old ones open Outlook and likes and most people like me are lazy to set them up.
• Oerd: Don't use mailto:, please don't feed the spambots
• Kyle Yeo: Right, i think i'm getting a clearer picture on how a php email script works, but can anyone show a email display if my code goes like this :
• Kyle Yeo: mail($to, $subject, $message, $siteurl . " " . $senderemail)

Answer 1

Check out php mail in the manual

additional_headers (optional)

String to be inserted at the end of the email header.

This is typically used to add extra headers (From, Cc, and Bcc). Multiple extra headers should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n).

Example from the manual

$to = '[email protected]';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: [email protected]' . "\r\n" .
 'Reply-To: [email protected]' . "\r\n" .
 'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

Update:

You also asked about putting the name in the from address. To do this just change the From: in the headers to WEBMASTER NAME <[email protected]>

• Kyle Yeo: This is pretty detailed. I'm going to try sending a basic script like this, see how it looks like over at the mail client side.

Answer 2

If you put a mailto link on your page, when a user clicks on that, then it will open up the user's email client, and they can send you an email. The downside is that the email address that's on the page is easily accessible to spammers.

If you use a PHP form, then your email address will stay hidden - it's buried inside the code. The downside there is that there is that setting it up is more involved.

As Set Sail Media mentions above, you can specify a From address inside the headers parameter. If it's not set, then it'll use the details of the process that the webserver is running as ([email protected], for example.) Not the most useful, but it's generally not a problem.

If you want to know what the email address of the user is, the only way is to ask them as part of the form. You can't pick it up automatically.

• Kyle Yeo: right, to get the email address, i'll have to have an input inside the form. i'm kind of understanding the header files now, there should be a "From: $sender" kinda statement inside the header argument section..
• andrewsi: I tend to send emails from PHP using a generic From address in the headers, and include the email address that the user entered as part of the body of the email. Our email server is set up to ignore emails that don't have a valid From address, so if your user makes a typo in their address, you'll never get the email, and won't even know one was sent. It's all too easy to accidentally enter '[email protected]' - you can work out what it's supposed to be, but the server can't.

Answer 3

The mail function is used merely to send mail "to" people via the locally configured or specified remote mail server only, it cannot "receive" mail, to do that you will need other functionality, such as reading the data from the mail server, which is dependant on that mail server.

It is easier to put a "mailto" link on a web page, but basically with "mail()", you can make a whole little form they use which makes your web server act as an e-mail client that can only send mail (unless you put in advanced functionality).

• Kyle Yeo: "advanced functionality"? describe that, please. i'm interested to know what else could be inside a PHP email script... if you want to let me know, that is.
• andrewsi: You can add anything you could add to any other PHP script - you could write the email to a database, for example.
• TheFrack: As I stated above, you can do things such as read data directly from a mail server via multiple mediums, protocols or databases and you can use other libraries such as PHPMailer or even better, SwiftMailer, to at a minimum send mail in any form you like.

Answer 4

Here is a rudimentary form processing script that you might find helpful.

<?php
if ( isset( $_POST ) && count( $_POST ) > 0 ){
 // Form was submitted, process it
 foreach ( $_REQUEST as $k=>$v ){ // Loop through values submitted and add them to a message to send to form owner
 $k = stripslashes( $k );
 $v = stripslashes( $v );
 $message .= "$k: $v\r\n";
 }
 $headers = "From: Name <[email protected]>\r\n"; // This is the FROM address
 // Uncomment the following line to set From using the value passed to the form
 // $headers = "From: {$_POST['your_name']} <{$_POST['email']}>\r\n"; // This is the FROM address
 $ab = mail( '[email protected]', 'Contact Submission Form', $message, $headers ); // Send the email
 if ( $ab == true ){
 // Message sent!
 echo '<strong>Thank you, your message was received.</strong>';
 }
}
?>
<form action="" method="post" id="contactform">
<label for="your_name">Name:</label>
<input type="text" name="your_name" id="your_name" class="field" value="" />
<label for="email">Email:</label>
<input type="text" name="email" id="email" class="field" value="[email protected]" />
<label for="phone">Phone:<span>(optional)</span></label>
<input type="text" name="phone" id="phone" class="field" value="[phone]" />
<label for="message">Message:</label>
<textarea name="message" id="message" class="field textarea" cols="20" rows="5"></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="Send Message" />
</form>

Answer 5

The SMTP server that is sending the email is yours (your website) (it can be configured to be a remote server). That's why From field is taken in general from a text field in your form.