Issue with sending information from contact form - php

Question

I am trying to send the values from a php form as email. When I set the $message to var_export($_POST,true); it exports the information but not in a easily readable way.
I have tried to set the values for each one as $complain_detail = $_POST['complain_detail']; but it stops the page from working or does not send the email.
<?php
include 'main.php';
check_loggedin($pdo);
// output message (errors, etc)
$msg = '';
if ($_POST['submit']) {
if ($_POST['complain_type'] == null || $_POST['complain_title'] == null || $_POST['complain_issue_type'] == null || $_POST['complain_form'] == null || $_POST['complain_assigned_to'] == null || $_POST['complain_detail'] == null) {
$msg = "Something missing, please input all required information.";
} else {
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('INSERT IGNORE INTO complains (id, complain_type, complain_from, complain_assigned_to, complain_title, complain_detail, complained_date, complain_issue_type, complain_status) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)');
$status = $stmt->execute(["", $_POST['complain_type'], $_POST['complain_form'], $_POST['complain_assigned_to'], $_POST['complain_title'], $_POST['complain_detail'], date("Y-m-d H:i:s"), $_POST['complain_issue_type'], "Open"]);
$complain_id = $pdo->lastInsertId();
$incident_record = $pdo->prepare('INSERT IGNORE INTO incident_record (id,complain_id, user_id, issue_date, assign_to, assign_by_client, record_type, record_details) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)');
$status = $incident_record->execute(["", $complain_id , $_SESSION['id'], date("Y-m-d H:i:s"), $_POST['complain_assigned_to'], $_POST['complain_form'], 'Created' , 'Complain Title: ' . $_POST['complain_title'] . ', Complain Details : ' . $_POST['complain_detail'] . ', Complain Issue Type : ' . $_POST['complain_issue_type']. ', Open' ]);
$to_email = 'email#sdf.coms';
$subject = 'New Incident Logged';
$message = var_export($_POST,true);
$headers = 'From: email#sdf.coms';
mail($to_email,$subject,$message,$headers,"-f email#sdf.coms");
$msg = "Incident has been loggged.";
}
} else {
$msg = "Whoops, something went wrong - Please try again.";
}
?>
Currently format is been sent as
array ( 'complain_type' => 'WASP', 'complain_title' =>
'Test', 'complain_assigned_to' => '9', 'complain_issue_type' =>
'Support', 'complain_form' => '9', 'complain_detail' => 'Is this
better?', 'submit' => 'Submit Issue', )
I would like to to read as
"A ticket has been opened under "type" and has been assigned to "user"
"with description!

Answer 1

$_POST is an array, containing the request elements. Let's try to visualise it together...
If you have this HTML:
<form action="action.php" method="post">
<p>Your name: <input type="text" name="name" /></p>
<p><input type="submit" /></p>
</form>
And this action.php file:
<?php var_dump($_POST);?>
The output will be the following:
array(1) { ["name"]=> string(1) "1" }
So, in order to access the name value within the array, I need to call for $_POST["element"] where your element is the HTML name of the request parameter.
So, if in your HTML, the message is obtained with the following input:
<input type="text" name="message" />
In order to properly retrieve it in your PHP code, you need to adjust the $message variable to be the following:
$message = $_POST["message"];
Thus, you can concatenate your request parameters into your message variable like this:
$message = "A ticket has been opened under " . $_POST["complain_type"] . " and has been assigned to user " . $_POST["complain_assigned_to"] . " with description " . $_POST["complain_detail"];