How to add HTML attach-file to PHP? - php

Question

I'm trying to create contact form that would let me attach file. I'm very new to PHP. I have tried looking for youtube videos but was not able to find any ussefull information. I'm hoping that you could help me with my PHP.
Also if there is better alternataive or the way of doing it , please share it with me.
HTML
<form style="display:flex; flex-direction: column;" action="../mail/mail.php" method="post">
<input type="text" id="name" name="name" placeholder="Your full name.." required="required" />
<label for="email">Email</label>
<input type="email" id="email" name="email" placeholder="Your e-mail.." required="required" />
<label for="country">Country</label>
<select id="country" name="country" required="required">
<option value="Netherlands">Netherlands</option>
<option value="Saint Kitts and Nevis">Saint Kitts and Nevis</option <option value="Tajikistan">Tajikistan</option>
</select>
<label for="subject">Subject</label>
<select id="subject" name="subject" required="required">
<option value="Choose">Click here to select..</option>
<option value="Choose1">Click here to select1..</option>
<option value="Choose2">Click here to select.2.</option></select>
<div class="attachment-row">
<input id="attachment-file" type="file" class="input-field" name="attachment[]">
</div>
<label for="message">Message</label>
<textarea id="message" name="message" placeholder="Write your message here.."style="height:200px"></textarea>
<input type="submit" class="btn-send-message" name="submit" value="Send" /></form>
PHP
<?php
ob_start();
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
$to = "info#example.com"; // this is your Email address
$from = $_POST['email']; // this is the sender's Email address
$name = $_POST['name'];
$country = $_POST['country'];
$subject = $_POST['subject'];
$message = "From: ". $from . "\n\n" . "Subject: ". $subject . "\n\n" . "Country: ". $country ."\n\n"."Name: ". $name ."\n\n". "Wrote the following:" . "\n\n" . $_POST['message'];
$message2 = "Here is a copy of your message " . $name . "\n\n" . $_POST['message'];
mail($to,$subject,$message);
mail($from,$subject2,$message2); // sends a copy of the message to the sender
echo "Mail Sent. Thank you " . $name . ", we will contact you shortly.";
header("Location: ../thank-you-for-contacting.php");
}
ob_end_flush();
?>

Answer 1

First of all you don't need the output buffer at all. What you're doing here is simply loading a single echo line into memory and dumping it on the end.
Have a read on:
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ob-start.php
Your current code doesn't even look for attachments, you'd need something along the lines of:
if (count($_POST['attachment'])) {...}
Next thing you need to figure out is the structure of the email itself. For basics have a quick read on:
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mail
Keeping the headers and message itself separate is always a good idea, creating variables only used once is a bad one. SO you might try something like:
if (filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
$headers[] = 'To: '.filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
}
// They're both really bad filters, for application security You should do your research and define your own. Character encoding is a big deal btw.
Once you have a email formatted properly you should look at the attachments mentioned earlier. To understand how those are sent have a read on:
https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc1341/7_2_Multipart.html
TLDR; // If you want to code things, nothing is too long... but this should provide some clarity
header[] = "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=$UNIQUE_string";
$message = "--$UNIQUE_string".PHP_EOL;
$message .= "Content-type: text/plain;".PHP_EOL;
$message .= $content.PHP_EOL;
$message .= "--$UNIQUE_string".PHP_EOL;
$message .= 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="myFile"; filename="foo.txt"'.PHP_EOL;
$message .= "Content-Type: text/plain".PHP_EOL;
$message .= file_get_contents('foo.txt').PHP_EOL;
$message .= "--$UNIQUE_string--".PHP_EOL;