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PHP Build a Simple PHP Application Adding a Contact Form Working with Concatenation and Whitespace

Posted by Domnick Knowlton
Domnick Knowlton
Courses Plus Student 2,437 Points

Message not popping up!

So my message is not popping up and I am having an extra line break! Someone please help!

http://gyazo.com/7b8385652d19f03ef04ba7298e461d85

Here is my process file code.

<?php

$name = $_POST["name"];

$email = $_POST["email"];

$message = $_POST["message"];

$email_body = "";

$email_body = $email_body . "Name: " . $name . "\n";
$email_body = $email_body . "Email: " . $email . "\n";
$email_body = $email_body . "Message: " . $message;

echo $email_body;

?>

2 Answers

mikes02
PLUS
mikes02
Courses Plus Student 16,968 Points
mikes02
mikes02
Courses Plus Student 16,968 Points

I understand this is a matter of personal preference, but for me I do not like building out the body the way you are doing, I prefer this method because I think it's much cleaner and easier to read:

<?php
$name = $_POST['name'];
$email = $_POST['email'];
$message = $_POST['message'];

$body = "Name: $name\n";
$body .= "Email: $email\n";
$body .= "Message: $message";

echo $body;
?>

With that said, what does the markup look like for your input fields?

Domnick Knowlton
Domnick Knowlton
Courses Plus Student 2,437 Points

I just continued with the exercises. Seems to work fine now thanks though man!

mikes02
PLUS
mikes02
Courses Plus Student 16,968 Points
mikes02
mikes02
Courses Plus Student 16,968 Points

OK, well in case this can be helpful to anyone else you can do a pretty simple echo test on $body like so:

<?php
$success = FALSE;

if(isset($_POST['submit']))
{
    $name = $_POST['name'];
    $email = $_POST['email'];
    $message = $_POST['message'];

    $body = "Name: $name\n";
    $body .= "Email: $email\n";
    $body .= "Message: $message";

    $success = TRUE;
}
?>

and within the body of your page, for testing, you could use:

    <?php
    if($success == TRUE) {
        echo $body;
    }
    ?>
    <form action="" method="post">
        <input name="name">
        <input name="email">
        <textarea name="message"></textarea>
        <input name="submit" type="submit">
    </form>

This is a very, very basic test, we aren't doing any error handling, basically on submit we are just assigning the post values to variables, building the body, and then using a boolean as our success variable. If success is true down in the body we echo out the results of $body, so if the $body echos to the page with all the values you put in, you know that the input values are properly being assigned to variables.