php form writes to txt - php

Question

I am completely new to php. And have been following tutorials. I need to accomplish making a form which calls a php function which takes the input of the form and writes it to a file. Should be easy enough? I have tried this in many ways and this is the close I have gotten. However for some reason it writes works three times meaning three entries imputed then everything after the third is ignored. test.txt is the file which I write to.
<?php
$email= $_POST['email'];
$myFile = "test.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die("can't open file");
$stringData = "$email\n";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
?>
Here is the form I use to use the php.
<div id="login-box">
<form name="form" method="post" action="<?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];?>">
<div class="text-field">
<input name="email" id="email" type="text">
</div>
<input id="login" type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
</div>

Answer 1

I have tested your code and there is not any problem whatever you are mentioning.The code is inserting more than three record.So please carry on ...

Answer 2

Try to use this example
<?php
$email= $_POST['email'];
$myFile = "test.txt";
// First, let's make sure that the file exists and is writable.
if (is_writable($myFile)) {
// In our example we're opening $ myFile in the "append".
if (!$handle = fopen($myFile, 'a')) {
echo "Can't open ($myFile)";
exit;
}
if (fwrite($handle, $email) === FALSE) {
echo "Can't wtire to file ($myFile)";
exit;
}
echo "OK. Content ($email) written to file ($myFile)";
fclose($handle);
} else {
echo "File $myFile not available for writing.";
}
?>
Also you can simply debug your php code using this code:
echo <something_what_you_need>; die;
Maybe your code called multiple times and you can't see it.

Answer 3

Your Code should work but you wrote <? and not <?php in your form's action attribute.

Answer 4

Add these 2 lines at the top of your PHP code
ini_set('display_errors',1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
and see the real error message, not your silly "can't open" but the explanation, what is certainly going wrong.
If you can't get it's meaning yourself, post it here, exact and whole.

Answer 5

Maybe you submit form 3 times or push reload button on your browser panel ?
can you post your html ?
and try this:
<?php
if($_POST['email'])
{
$email= $_POST['email'];
$myFile = "test.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die("can't open file");
$stringData = "$email\n";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
}
?>