php form keeps giving me 500 error - php

Question

I'm having trouble getting my contact form to work. I'm new to php and this is the first mailer I've created, so I could definitely use some help.
Here's my HTML form
<form id="ajax-contact" method="post" action="mailer.php">
<div class="column">
<label for="name">name</label>
<input type="text" id="name" name="name" required>
<label for="email">email address</label>
<input type="email" id="email" name="email" required>
</div>
<div class="column">
<label for="message">message</label>
<textarea id="message" required></textarea>
</div>
<button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>
Here's my mailer.php
<?php
// My modifications to mailer script from:
// http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/create-ajax-contact-form
// Added input sanitizing to prevent injection
// Only process POST reqeusts.
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
// Get the form fields and remove whitespace.
$name = strip_tags(trim($_POST["name"]));
$name = str_replace(array("\r","\n"),array(" "," "),$name);
$email = filter_var(trim($_POST["email"]), FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
$message = trim($_POST["message"]);
// Check that data was sent to the mailer.
if ( empty($name) OR empty($message) OR !filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
// Set a 400 (bad request) response code and exit.
http_response_code(400);
echo "Oops! There was a problem with your submission. Please complete the form and try again.";
exit;
}
$recipient = "thomas.lacroix.e#gmail.com";
$subject = "New message from $name";
$email_content = "Name: $name\n";
$email_content .= "Email: $email\n\n";
$email_content .= "Message:\n$message\n";
$email_headers = "From: $name <$email>";
// Send the email.
if (mail($recipient, $subject, $email_content, $email_headers)) {
// Set a 200 (okay) response code.
http_response_code(200);
echo "Thank You!";
} else {
// Set a 500 (internal server error) response code.
http_response_code(500);
echo "Oops! Something went wrong.";
}
} else {
// Not a POST request, set a 403 (forbidden) response code.
http_response_code(403);
echo "There was a problem with your submission, please try again.";
}
?>
I've searched for people with similar problems and I believe I need to add something with my email host settings. Let's be honest, though, I don't know what I'm doing. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

It looks like on your form you forgot to include the name for the textarea which is causing an undefined index in the code when trying to get $_POST['message']
<textarea name="message" id="message" required></textarea>
Doing the above resolved the issue in testing for me.