jquery Contact Form and getting an email with message-text - php

Question

I made a contact form based on this tutorial but I can't get this one to work.
When I hit the submit button, nothing happens (it seems like the page is being refreshed or on my live website it returns to the index.html) and I don't get an email and no response.
I want to get an email containing the content of the form that the user filled out.
This is the ajaxSubmit.php:
<?php
$name = $_POST['name']; // contain name of person
$email = $_POST['email']; // Email address of sender
$web = $_POST['web']; // Your website URL
$body = $_POST['text']; // Your message
$receiver = "xxx#gmail.com" ; // hardcorde your email address here - This is the email address that all your feedbacks will be sent to
if (!empty($name) & !empty($email) && !empty($body)) {
$body = "Name:{$name}\n\nWebsite :{$web}\n\nComments:{$body}";
$send = mail($receiver, 'Contact Form Submission', $body, "From: {$email}");
if ($send) {
echo 'true'; //if everything is ok,always return true , else ajax submission won't work
}
}
?>
xxx#gmail.com is just a placeholder here for my regular email adress, of course.
FIDDLE with html, js and css.
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I reccomend using isset, to check whether the posted variables actually exists, furthermore: I recommend using the ternary operator to check if they are actually set:
$name = isset($_POST['name']) ? $_POST['name'] : false;
$email = isset($_POST['email']) ? $_POST['email'] : false;
$web = isset($_POST['web']) ? $_POST['web'] : false;
$text = isset($_POST['text']) ? $_POST['text'] : false;
$receiver = "xxx#gmail.com"; // You forgot to close a whitespace here.
if(($name && $email && $web && $text) != false)
{
// It's okay to send email now.
// Checkpoint.
}
I recommend using this spam check filtering function:
function spamcheck($field)
{
//address using FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL
$field=filter_var($field, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
//address using FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL
if(filter_var($field, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL))
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
And I like to use this modified mail function:
// Usage: sendMail($toEmail, $fromEmail, $subject, $message);
// Pre: $toEmail is of type string and is a valid email address,
// indicating the receiver.
// $fromEmail is of type string and is a valid email address,
// indicating the sender.
// $subject is of type string, indicating the email subject.
// $message is of type string, indicating the message to be send
// via the email, from $fromEmail's address to $toEmail's address.
// Post: An email containing $message and the subject $subject from
// $fromEmail's address to $toEmail's address if $fromEmail
// does not indicate a spam email.
function sendMail($toEmail, $fromEmail, $subject, $message)
{
$validFromEmail = spamcheck($fromEmail);
if($validFromEmail)
{
mail($toEmail, $subject, $message, "From: $fromEmail");
}
}
So you can continue from where we loft off. To begin with: You don't really need the curly braces. Also.. you're overwriting the $body variable, it would make more sense to keep the variables seperated. I also recommend storing the subject in a variable.
$subject = 'Contact Form Submission'; // Place where we left of at Checkpoint.
$message = "Name: $name\n\nWebsite :$web\n\nComments:$body"; // Place where we left of at Checkpoint.
sendMail($email, $receiver, $subject, $message); // Place where we left of at Checkpoint.
You also have to make sure that you have access to a SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol), so it might not be enough for you to be working localhost if you don't have a SMTP server to use. IF you have one, and It's not working, then you might have to config the php ini settings:
ini_set('SMTP' , 'smtp.yourwebsite.com');
ini_set('smtp_port' , '25');
ini_set('username' , 'example#example.com');
ini_set('password' , 'pass');
ini_set('sendmail_from' , 'example#example.com');
Note: It would be smart to actually make the modified mail function RETURN the mail function, so that you can check whether it was successful or not.