asked on

if then statement within html email message

I have a form which collects a user’s area code, exchange, station, and optional extension number. These variables are then used in an html mail script which emails those 3 or four fields to me. My mail script works fine as follows:

$to = 'myname@mydomain.com';
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: my namee <myname@mydomain.com>' . "\r\n";
$subject = 'The subject line';
$message = "
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML email</title>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Telephone:</td><td>".$areacode."-".$exchange."-".$station." ".$_POST['extension']."</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
";
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

But, because the $_POST['extension'] variable may not contain any characters, I thought I’d dress-up my script by writing an “if-then” statement that says something like
if (strlen($_POST['extension']) > 0 then the output should be
areacode-exchange-station ext nnn (where nnn is the optional extension number that may or may not be provided) and if the strlen($_POST['extension']) is < 1 then the output should be simply
areacode-exchange-station

I have tried every combination of writing an if-then statement and escaping the quotes that I am ashamed to admit how much time I’ve wasted.

Might someone provide direction?
Thanks.

Frosty555

It would be more elegant if you broke up that $message variable into a few statements rather than having the entire thing be one big huge statement, but you can do it with the ternary operator:

$to  = 'myname@mydomain.com';
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: my namee <myname@mydomain.com>' . "\r\n";
$subject = 'The subject line';

$telephone = $areacode . "-" . $exchange . "-" . $station . (strlen($_POST['extension']) > 0 ? (" ext " . $_POST['extension']) : $_POST['extension']);

$message = "
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML email</title>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Telephone:</td><td>$telephone</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
";

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The important part of the statement is the ternary operator used in this part of the expression:

(strlen($_POST['extension']) > 0 ? (" ext " . $_POST['extension']) : "")

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Which states

IF the statement:
strlen($_POST['extension']) > 0
evaluates to TRUE then output:
("ext " . $_POST['extension'])
otherwise, output
"" <-- empty string

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Frosty555

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lepirtle

ASKER

Frosty555,
Thanks very much! I tried both solutions and they each work the way I want. Note for anyone else regarding this: the 2nd solution, line #5 is missing a ")", it should read:
if( strlen($_POST['extension']) > 0 ) {

I also want to thank you for the explanation you provided in solution #1 because I didn't know about ternary operators but reading your very thoughtful plain-english explanation helped me understand.

Chris Sandrini

also a very elegant way is to use empty()

This will check if $_POST['extesion'] is actually set and if it has a value in it.

For example

if ( !empty($_POST['extension']) )
{
  $telephone = $telephone . " ext " . $_POST['extension'];   
}

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