Why is my Form POST taking me to a new page? - php

Question

Setup
I have a simple HTML form that points to a PHP script that will send the email.
Problem
When I click submit the email is sent, but I am taken to the PHP url.
I tried to all TARGET="_self" in the and declarations but i was still taken o a new page.
Code
HTML CODE
<form name="contactform" method="post" action="send_form_email1.php">
<table width="450px">
<tr>
<td>
<input type="text" placeholder="Full Name" name="full_name"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<input type="text" placeholder="Email Address" name="email"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<input type="text" placeholder="Phone Number" name="telephone"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<input type="text" placeholder="Question" name="comments"/>
</td>
</tr>
tr>
<td colspan="2" style="text-align:center">
<input type="submit" value="Submit" >
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
PHP SCRIPT
// EDIT THE 2 LINES BELOW AS REQUIRED
// EDIT THE 2 LINES BELOW AS REQUIRED
$email_to = "zachmurray13#gmail.com";
$email_subject = "Your email subject line";
function died($error) {
// your error code can go here
echo "We are very sorry, but there were error(s) found with the form you submitted. ";
echo "These errors appear below.<br /><br />";
echo $error."<br /><br />";
echo "Please go back and fix these errors.<br /><br />";
die();
}
// validation expected data exists
if(!isset($_POST['full_name']) ||
!isset($_POST['email']) ||
!isset($_POST['telephone']) ||
!isset($_POST['comments'])) {
died('We are sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the form you submitted.');
}
$full_name = $_POST['full_name']; // required
$email_from = $_POST['email']; // required
$telephone = $_POST['telephone']; // not required
$comments = $_POST['comments']; // required
$error_message = "";
$email_exp = '/^[A-Za-z0-9._%-]+#[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,4}$/';
if(!preg_match($email_exp,$email_from)) {
$error_message .= 'The Email Address you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
$string_exp = "/^[A-Za-z .'-]+$/";
if(!preg_match($string_exp,$full_name)) {
$error_message .= 'The First Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(strlen($comments) < 2) {
$error_message .= 'The Comments you entered do not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(strlen($error_message) > 0) {
died($error_message);
}
$email_message = "Form details below.\n\n";
function clean_string($string) {
$bad = array("content-type","bcc:","to:","cc:","href");
return str_replace($bad,"",$string);
}
$email_message .= "Last Name: ".clean_string($last_name)."\n";
$email_message .= "Email: ".clean_string($email_from)."\n";
$email_message .= "Telephone: ".clean_string($telephone)."\n";
$email_message .= "Comments: ".clean_string($comments)."\n";
// create email headers
$headers = 'From: '.$email_from."\r\n".
'Reply-To: '.$email_from."\r\n" .
'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
#mail($email_to, $email_subject, $email_message, $headers);
?>
<?php
}
?>
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Post works by sending the data to the page specified in to form's action. you need to redirect the browser back to the page you want. you can do this by a 302 redirect.
header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com/home-page.html');
exit;

Answer 2

If you don't want to go to the new URL then you can make AJAX request to the php script instead of form submit.

Answer 3

Form element works as sending data to different page. as you have specified in action.
if you want to come back to actual one
you have to redirect to it.
you can also include your send_form_email1.php file to actual one.
for instance:
header('Location: page_url');
or
include('yourfile');
if you are including file to actual file then you have to set action="" blank it automatically send it to same page and you have to check as post request. Then other code will remain same as.

Answer 4

Your browser will load the page as the form is posted to it. This is expected behaviour.
You can workaround this with some options:
The post is done to the same page, the PHP code handling the form is part of it. Check if ($_POST) to know the user is submitting something, but the page will be reloaded anyway;
The page your form is calling will redirect the user to some other page;
Post it using AJAX. This way you don't even lose the fields content, the page isn't refreshed at all.
Option 1 is not preferred because if the user tries to reload the page after submitting the form, the browser will submit it again. The best practice to avoid this is to redirect the user, unless you are posting with AJAX, in this case you have full control of whatever is posted, it doesn't even populate the browser history with them.

Answer 5

I think using header will be the great option. .
header('Location of your html page'); in your php page to handle forms..
There is another option that is not used widely..
You could include the code in php file to your first page and save it as a php code , then in the action attribute of form tag , Please enter no values like
<form name="contactform" method="post" action="">
It is not a recommended one, But for your problem, I strongly recommend this as the most simple solution

Answer 6

You can try a few options
You can try ajax - being on the same page and use another php file to send your email
This would require you to change the extension from .html to .php. You can post the form to the existing page it self. There are some security look holes though.
You can keep your existing code, but redirect back to the initial page once the email has been sent through javascript or php headers.