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Send Email

1) HTML Form with Inputs

<form action="" method="post">
  <label for="name">Name:</label>
  <input type="text" name="name" id="name" />

  <label for="Email">Email:</label>
  <input type="text" name="email" id="email" />

  <label for="Message">Message:</label><br />
  <textarea name="message" rows="20" cols="20" id="message"></textarea>

  <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

2) Process with PHP

This could be in a seperate file (e.g. sendemail.php) in which you'd set the action URL of the form to go there. Or, have the form submit to itself (leave action URL blank) and test for one of the values of the form being POSTed and process there.

<?php
       // from the form
       $name = trim(strip_tags($_POST['name']));
       $email = trim(strip_tags($_POST['email']));
       $message = htmlentities($_POST['message']);

       // set here
       $subject = "Contact form submitted!";
       $to = 'your@email.com';

       $body = <<<HTML
$message
HTML;

       $headers = "From: $email\r\n";
       $headers .= "Content-type: text/html\r\n";

       // send the email
       mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);

       // redirect afterwords, if needed
       header('Location: thanks.html');
?>

3) Test it

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Subscribe to The Thread

  1. Rob Salaman says:
    10/05/2009 at 8:58 am

    thanks this was real helpful !
    as I’m quite new to PHP.

    Reply
  2. Andy Jones says:
    10/23/2009 at 1:33 am

    Hiya – great stuff as always – but for some reason, I can’t get this to work! It redirects to me thanks page, but the email doesn’t come through. Is there something special that has to be configured in php? I’m running php4 (but I don’t really get too involved in php stuff!!)

    Lovin your work on twitter by the way!

    Reply
  3. imeera says:
    11/22/2009 at 6:31 am

    great! – but for some reason, It redirects to me thanks page, but the email comes blank no data in there. any help would be appreciated. I am getting in to php.

    Reply
  4. Leon says:
    03/21/2010 at 6:18 am

    Thanks Chris, it is really helpfull

    Reply
  5. Blair says:
    04/27/2010 at 9:22 am

    still can’t get this to work. using wordpress.

    Reply
  6. Blair says:
    04/27/2010 at 11:42 am

    I get this error: Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home2/yourmedp/public_html/wp-content/themes/obvious/inc/contact-form.php:3) in /home2/yourmedp/public_html/wp-content/themes/obvious/inc/contact-form.php on line 24

    Reply
  7. varun says:
    06/21/2010 at 6:51 am

    Can U Tell Me Solution For Bulk Mail ??

    Reply
  8. Danny says:
    09/03/2010 at 10:34 am

    Replace the following in the php bit:

    $body = <<<HTML
    $message
    HTML;

    with:

    $body = $message;

    And it should work.

    Reply
  9. Liam says:
    09/08/2010 at 8:27 am

    Hi, thanks for this code, i was pulling my hair out trying to get my form to work! i did have some problems though, you need to change the code as mentioned above^^^^^ and also I was not receiving the persons name in the email so i substituted “Contact form submitted!” for “$name” and now their name comes through in the header :-)

    Thanks again, Liam

    Reply
  10. José Monteiro says:
    10/03/2010 at 2:29 pm

    It work for after some tweak:

    put the input form and textarea names and ids lowercase.

    But i can not use it like this.

    Reply
  11. Stephen says:
    10/23/2010 at 4:48 am

    I’m not sure how to link the PHP with the HTML. Could someone email me?

    Reply
  12. Ayo says:
    10/24/2010 at 8:18 pm

    Just getting warmed up on the development level of web education.. need this like last year.
    Very useful, thank you.

    Reply
  13. Ayo says:
    10/25/2010 at 7:01 pm

    I got issues testing from a local server. How can I make it work please?.

    Reply
  14. Ayo says:
    10/26/2010 at 7:21 am

    I understand I could download a mail server. Any ideas?

    Reply
  15. Sebastian Dreijer says:
    10/30/2010 at 8:54 am

    It only works if you write exactly the same in the variable name ($Name) as the in the input tag in your html document. I made it work by the copy-paste method so I was sure that the variables had the same name..

    In the code example the name is written with capitalize and in the php code the variable name is written with lowercase, and that courses the problem.

    Hope it helped..

    Reply
  16. Arthur says:
    11/08/2010 at 11:23 am

    Hey Chris,

    Thanks for this form. Though for some reason when I put in an email address the form doesn’t get submitted properly. But, if I leave the email blank or leave out the @ it works fine. Do you have any suggestions?

    Cheers!

    Reply
  17. dave says:
    02/16/2011 at 2:39 pm

    In the php code, is the period after the second “$headers” a mistake? or does it need to be there?

    Reply
  18. andyzzy says:
    04/24/2011 at 1:26 pm

    hi
    sorry, im italian and what mean <<<HTML HTML; ?

    i have seen this in other places.

    Reply
  19. daniar says:
    05/06/2011 at 8:38 pm

    why when I run this source

    results are always :
    Warning: mail() [function.mail]: Failed to connect to mailserver at “localhost” port 25, verify your “SMTP” and “smtp_port” setting in php.ini or use ini_set().

    Reply
  20. Chris Clowers says:
    05/17/2011 at 9:12 am

    you are the only one who put this task into terms that actually worked for me…very easy to understand. Thanks!

    Reply
  21. Jim says:
    06/03/2011 at 7:01 am
    <?php
       // from the form
       $name = htmlentities($_POST['name']);
	   $title = htmlentities($_POST['title']);
	   $company = htmlentities($_POST['company']);
       $email = htmlentities($_POST['email']);
	   $phone = htmlentities($_POST['phone']);
	   $fax = htmlentities($_POST['fax']);
       $address1 = htmlentities($_POST['address1']);
	   $address2 = htmlentities($_POST['address2']);
	   $city = htmlentities($_POST['city']);
	   $zip = htmlentities($_POST['zip']);
	   $country = htmlentities($_POST['country']);
	   $needs = htmlentities($_POST['needs']);   

       // set here
       $subject = "Incoming Information Request";
       $to = 'info@gauging.com';

       $message="Incoming Information Request\n\n";
		$message .="From: $name\n";
		$message .="Title: $title\n";
		$message .="Company: $company\n";
		$message .="Email: $email\n";
		$message .="Phone: $phone\n";
		$message .="Fax: $fax\n";
		$message .="Address: $address1\n";
		$message .="Address: $address2\n";
		$message .="City: $city\n";
		$message .="Zip: $zip\n";
		$message .="Country: $country\n";
		$message .="Message: $needs\n";

       $headers = "From: $email\r\n";
       $headers .= "Content-Type: text/plain;\n";

       // send the email
       mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

       // redirect afterwords, if needed
       header('Location: thanks.html');
?>
    Reply

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