asked on

PHP - mail button not working, HTML5 website

Hello - I have an HTML5 website and need help getting the mail.php to work. My web host is Brinkster, and I've verified that PHP is running.

Here's the current code:

<?php
  
  $to = "user@mydomain.com";
  
  $name = $_POST['name'];
  $subject = "Email from webform";
  
  $body = stripslashes($_POST['message']);
  
  $from = $_POST['email'];
  $headers = "From: " . $from;
  $error_messages = array();
  
  if( strlen($name) < 1 ) {
    $error_messages[] = "name required";
  }
  
  if( strlen($body) < 1 ) {
    $error_messages[] = "comment required";
  }
  
  if( strlen($from) < 1 ) {
    $error_messages[] = "email required";
  }
  
  if(sizeof($error_messages) == 0 && mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers)) {
    echo("thank you");
  } else {
    foreach( $error_messages as $error_message ) {
      echo "$error_message <br />";
    }
  }
  
?>

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Any help appreciated. Thanks

Loganathan Natarajan

do you get any error message?

Trevor Local

ASKER

No - there's no response, and no reaction from the "send" button.

Dave Baldwin

There's not really anything there, at least not adequate to send email. Here is my PHP Email demo that I have posted here many times. Save it as "Email.php" so it can POST to itself. Enter your own email address in the $toText and try it out.

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors','1');

# some settings of POST vars
if (!isset($_POST['send']))  $send = ''; else $send = $_POST['send'];
if (!isset($_POST['toText'])) $toText = ''; else $toText = $_POST['toText'];
if (!isset($_POST['ccText'])) $ccText = ''; else $ccText = $_POST['ccText'];
if (!isset($_POST['subjectText'])) $subjectText = ''; else $subjectText = $_POST['subjectText'];
if (!isset($_POST['msgText'])) $msgText = ''; else $msgText = $_POST['msgText'];
if (!isset($_POST['ccText'])) $ccText = ''; else $ccText = $_POST['ccText'];
if (!isset($_POST['bccText'])) $bccText = ''; else $bccText = $_POST['bccText'];
if (!isset($_POST['nameText'])) $nameText = ''; else $nameText = $_POST['nameText'];
if (!isset($_POST['fromText'])) $fromText = ''; else $fromText = $_POST['fromText'];

if ($send == "") {
    $title="Test Email Page";
    $announce="---";
}
else {
	if($fromText === "") die("No name!");
  $toText="youremail@yourdomain.com";
	$title="Test Email Page";
  $announce="Your Message has been Sent!";
	$header = "From: ".$fromText."\r\n";
//	$header .= "Cc: ".$ccText."\n";
	$header .= "Reply-To : ".$fromText."\r\n";
	$header .= "Return-Path : ".$fromText."\r\n";
	$header .= "X-Mailer: PHP\r\n";
	$header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
	$header .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
//	ini_set(sendmail_from,$fromText);  
	mail($toText, $subjectText, $msgText, $header, '-f'.$fromText);
//	ini_restore(sendmail_from);
}
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title><?php echo($title)?></title>
<style type="text/css">
<!-- 
A:link { color: #999999; }
A:visited { color: #999999; }
A:hover {color: #0099ff;}
-->
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
function check()
{
var at=document.getElementById("fromText").value.indexOf("@");
var eml=document.getElementById("fromText").value;
var nam=document.getElementById("nameText").value;
var alerttxt="";
var submitOK="true";

if (eml.length < 5 || at == -1)
    {
    alerttxt=alerttxt+"Please enter a valid e-mail address!\r\n";
    submitOK="false"
    //return false;
    }
if (nam.length < 3)
    {
    alerttxt=alerttxt+"Please enter your name.\r\n";
    submitOK="false"
    //return false;
    }
if (submitOK=="false")
    {
    alert(alerttxt);
    return false;
    }

}
// -->
</script>
</head>

<body bgcolor="#ddeedd">
<div align="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" width="580">
<tr><td align="center">

<?php
if ($send != "") {
   	echo ("To: ".$toText."<br>\r\nSubject: ".$subjectText."<br>\r\n".$msgText."<br>\r\n".$header);
		}
?>

<p><b><font color="#000000" size="5">Test Email</font></b></p>
<font size="4" color="#000000">

<form method="POST" action="Email.php" onsubmit="return check();">
    <p><font size="3"><b>Name: <input type="text" name="nameText" id="nameText" size="46"></b></font></p>
    <p><font size="3"><b>Email: <input type="text" name="fromText" id="fromText" size="46"></b></font></p>
    <input type="hidden" name="subjectText" value="Web Mail">
    <p><font face="Arial" size="3"><b>Message Text:</b></font></p>
    <p><font face="Arial" size="3"><b><textarea rows="6" name="msgText" cols="60"></textarea></b></font></p>
    <p><font size="3"><b><input type="submit" value="Send" name="send" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold"></b></font></p>
    <input type="hidden" name="state" value="1">
  </form>
  <b><font face="Arial" size="4" color="#e00000"><?php echo($announce)?></font></b><br><br>

</font>
</td></tr>
</table> 
</div>

</body>
</html>

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Loganathan Natarajan

please post your html code, with button click

Trevor Local

ASKER

I uploaded the email.php, tested it, and I get some error code as well as "Your Message Has Been Sent", however the message was not sent.

Here's the output:

Warning: mail() [function.mail]: Could not execute mail delivery program '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i' in /sites/hostserver/mydomainserver/home/public_html/email.php on line 33
To: webform@mydomain.com
Subject: Web Mail
testing webform
From: validuser@gmail.com Reply-To : validuser@gmail.com Return-Path : validuser@gmail.com X-Mailer: PHP MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

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Dave Baldwin

Is this a Windows server? That error message usually occurs because you do not have a local SMTP server installed to send out email. Do you have access to your 'php.ini' file?

Trevor Local

ASKER

Here's a copy of the HTML button click:

<div class='mod modGetInTouch'>
            <h4>(xxx) xxx-8515</h4>
            <p class='thanks' style='display: none'>
              Thanks for contacting us. We'll be in touch soon!
            </p>
            <form class="nice" method="post" action="send.php" accept-charset="UTF-8"><p>
              <input class="input-text required" placeholder="Your Name" name="name" type="text" />
            </p>
            <p>
              <input class="input-text required email" placeholder="Your Email" name="email" type="text" />
            </p>
            <p>
              <textarea class="required" placeholder="Your Message" name="message" rows="" cols=""></textarea>
            </p>
            <p>
              <input class="button" value="Send" type="submit" />
            </p>
            </form>
          </div>

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SOLUTION

Dave Baldwin

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Trevor Local

ASKER

It's a Linux host, and I don't see the php.ini file.

Dave Baldwin

You need to call your hosting company and ask them what you need to do. Most Linux hosts provide 'sendmail' or the equivalent and this wouldn't be a problem. It appears that Brinkster has set things up differently. In that case, only they can change it. That link above is the only thing I found in their help pages about email setup.

Ray Paseur

This test script, shown below in its entirety, should work. Install it in your web root directory. You will want to give the tech support team at Brinkster something to test the installation and this will do the trick. Change the "to" address to your own email. You may have to look in the spam folder to find the message. Once you know this part is working and you have received the Hello World message, you can move on to adding other headers, etc.

<?php error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', TRUE);
mail('You@Your.org', 'PHP mail() test', 'Hello World');

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Chris Sandrini

Hi

If php is not able to send the email it will not print any errors. Try to change your mailfunction to

mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers,'-f' . $from)

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You can also check if you are able to send an email from shell with

echo "test" | mail -s test your@mail.com

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Trevor Local

ASKER

I contacted Brinkster and they do not support PHP mail, but do support PHPmailer. They gave me this link:
Brinkster - PHPmailer info

So I'll see if I can insert relevant information to get it to work.

Trevor Local

ASKER

OK I set up the new phpmailer form and I can use the web mail form to send a message, but it's not passing the input information (user name, email address, message contents) nor is it giving any response, like "thanks for the message".

Trevor Local

ASKER

I used the sample code and it works. Not sure how to pass along the information from the web form: email address, user name, message.

Code I'm using:

<?PHP
 
require("/sites/servername/username/home/includes/class.phpmailer.php");
 
$mail = new PHPMailer();
 
$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->Host = "mymail.brinkster.com";
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = "you@domain.com";
$mail->Password = "password";
 
$mail->From = "you@domain.com";
$mail->FromName = "Your Name";
$mail->AddAddress("user@domain.com", "Display Name");
 
$mail->IsHTML(true);
 
$mail->Subject = "Test message sent using the PHPMailer component";
$mail->Body    = "This is a test message.";
 
if(!$mail->Send())
{
   echo "Message could not be sent. <p>";
   echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
   exit;
}
 
echo "Message has been sent";
?>

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Trevor Local

ASKER

Anyone have pointers on how to pass web form info via the phpmailer script?
thanks!

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Kyle Hamilton

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Ray Paseur

This shows the general design of how to use HTML forms in PHP.
http://us.php.net/manual/en/tutorial.forms.php

Trevor Local

ASKER

Hi kozaiwaniec - I got the code and inserted my values and now the mailer works. Thank you!
But I do not get any verification or feedback from the web button.

Kyle Hamilton

do you mean the submit button?

you would need to redirect the browser to a thank you page in your script.

Or,

You can use AJAX to submit the form and display a thank you message upon success.

which way do you want to do it?

Trevor Local

ASKER

It sounds like the AJAX way is more clean and doesn't need to use a redirect, is that correct?

Ray Paseur

I would recommend hiring a PHP professional programmer to help with this project. It's not "hard" but there are so many layers of knowledge that trying to acquire them all for yourself may take a long time. And in being respectful of your time, a pro can give you the solutions immediately, whereas you might be spending weeks or months of study trying to acquire knowledge that some else has and can implement in a matter of hours.

If you decide that learning is more important than instant results (a very understandable choice) then grab a copy of this book and dive in. It's very readable and comes with a downloadable code library that you can copy and modify for your own tasks.
http://www.sitepoint.com/books/phpmysql5/

Best regards, ~Ray

Trevor Local

ASKER

OK, I figured out the missing code. I changed

echo "Message has been sent";

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echo "success";

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Ray Paseur

You're kidding, right?

Kyle Hamilton

Trevor Local

ASKER

Why would I be kidding?

Trevor Local

ASKER

Thanks for the help everyone!