php -> foreach loop

Question

I want to create a form, which is basically a text area which has e-mail addresses on new lines:

For example;

<textarea>
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]
</textarea>

I then want this form to submit to a php page, which will split the e-mail addresses and put them into a loop, so I could paste a list of 300 e-mails into a text area, in that format, and then submit the form and it would do a foreach loop for EACH individual e-mail (e-mail them).

Could somebody please explain how I would split the e-mail addresses up individually and then process them into a loop?

Thanks a bunch

• Jim: Sounds like a recipe for spam, especially if the form is not secured properly...that is if that isn't what the original intention was.
• Latox: It is a form I will be using myself to send e-mails to a list of subscribers I have, save me putting them into a database and running it from there, make things easier and just paste them all into a text area and submit it. It won't be used by anyone else, just an administrative tool to make things easier.

Answer 1

If the email addresses are comma separated, use

$addresses = explode(',', $textareaValue);
foreach ($addresses as $address) {
 $address = trim($address); // Remove any extra whitespace
}

If you want to split the addresses on a number of different characters (comma, newline, space, etc) use preg_split in place of explode

$addresses = preg_split('/[\s,]+/', $textareaValue);

• Latox: Thanks for the answer, will give it a go today!

Answer 2

To get them into an array you can use PHP's explode function which splits a string up based on a string delimiter:

$email_addresses = explode(",\n", $email_address_string);
foreach ($email_addresses as $email_address) {
 // Process $email_address
}