php Contact-form issue - php

Question

Just wondering if any of you genius's can help me out with some issues im having regarding a php contact form.
Basically, I have this contact form that requires the basic: name, email, comment. The problem is : when the 'submit' button is pressed when the fields are blank, the validation kicks in effectively, but at the expense of 'breaking' the page (i.e. the </body> and </html> tags are not able to be closed).
I feel this is down to the die(); in function died($error).....take a look....any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks
PHP: (send_email.php file)
<?php
if(isset($_POST['email'])) {
// Email addys
$email_to = "ch#yahoo.co.uk";
$email_subject = "message";
function died($error) {
// ERRORS
echo "<p class=\"content-text3\">I am very sorry, but there were error(s) found with the form you submitted.</p> ";
echo "<p class=\"content-text\">These errors are as follows:</p><br /><br />";
echo "<p class=\"content-text\">$error </p> <br /><br />";
echo "<p class=\"content-text\">Please go back and fix these errors.</p><br /><br />";
die();
}
// validation
if(!isset($_POST['first_name']) ||
!isset($_POST['last_name']) ||
!isset($_POST['email']) ||
!isset($_POST['telephone']) ||
!isset($_POST['comments'])) {
died('We are sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the form you submitted.');
die();
}
$first_name = $_POST['first_name']; // required
$last_name = $_POST['last_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($string_exp,$first_name)) {
$error_message .= 'The First Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(!preg_match($string_exp,$last_name)) {
$error_message .= 'The Last Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(strlen($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);
}
$email_message .= "First Name: ".clean_string($first_name)."\n";
$email_message .= "Last Name: ".clean_string($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);
?>
<!-- sent success -->
<p class="content-text">Thank you for contacting me. I will be in touch with you very soon.</p>
<?php
}
?>
Contact form:
<div id="contact-form">
<form id="contactform" method="post" action="send_email.php">
<table width="450px" border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="first_name" style="color:#999;">First Name *</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<input type="text" name="first_name" maxlength="50" size="30"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="last_name" style="color:#999;">Last Name *</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<input type="text" name="last_name" maxlength="50" size="30"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="email" style="color:#999; font-size:14px">Email Address *</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<input type="text" name="email" maxlength="80" size="30"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="telephone" style="color:#999; font-size:14px">Telephone Number</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<input type="text" name="telephone" maxlength="30" size="30"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="comments" style="color:#999; font-size:14px">Comments *</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<textarea name="comments" cols="25" rows="6"></textarea>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" style="text-align:center">
<input id="sub" type="submit" value="Submit"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</div><!--end contact form-->

Answer 1

I assume you're saying that the form isn't outputted when there are errors, correct?
This is because die() terminates the processing of the page, including anything outside of the PHP tags. You might try removing the die() statement from your error, and instead putting the died() function in an if/else statement.
Eg:
if (strlen($error_message) > 0) {
died($error_message);
} else {
// send the email
}

Answer 2

Yes, you have identified your own issue. Don't use die() in the middle of your script. Probably people are going to vote to close this, and I'm not going to rewrite simple code for you, but I'll risk giving you an actual push in the right direction and suggest that this is the format of the script you want:
First off alter your submit button so it has a name attribute:
<input id="sub" type="submit" name="SubmitEmailForm" value="Submit"/>
While this isn't as important here, when you have pages with multiple forms on them, it will allow you to determine which form was submitted.
In your validation script, initialize an errors array variable to be an empty array:
function validateEmailForm() {
$errors = array();
// All validation here
// if an error occurs...
$errors[] = 'Error text here.';
return $errors;
}
This way, you catch all of the validation errors at one time, so you can provide the user a full report of the things they need to fix.
Then your basic structure is:
if (isset($_POST['SubmitEmailForm'])) {
$errors = validateEmailForm();
if (count($errors) == 0) {
// Form was fine, go ahead and process it
// header(..location of your post-processing script or output..);
// Make sure you exit to end processing of script
exit;
} else {
//
// Output a box containing the errors from $errors using a foreach
//
}
}
//
// Output your form markup here.
//
This is the basic framework that most self-posting forms utilize, and you can add embellishment to this pattern pretty easily.