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PHP

Anton Moritz
Anton Moritz
5,490 Points
Posted by Anton Moritz
Anton Moritz
5,490 Points

Problem with "Enhancing a simple PHP application" - "Displaying the error message"

Randy Hoyt

I need your help with this. I've followed your code exactly, but I can't get the error message to display properly.

When entering some invalid information in the form, I am instead sent to a blank page. 

if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
$name = trim($_POST["name"]);
$email = trim($_POST["email"]);
$message = trim($_POST["message"]);


if ($name == "" OR $email == "" OR $message == "") {
    $error_message = "You must specify a value for name, email address, and message.";
}

foreach( $_POST as $value ){
    if( stripos($value,'Content-Type:') !== FALSE ){
        $error_message = "There was a problem with the information you entered.";
    }
}

if ($_POST["address"] != "") {
    $error_message = "Your form submission has an error.";
}

require_once("inc/phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php");
$mail = new PHPMailer();

if (!$mail->ValidateAddress($email)){
    $error_message = "You must specify a valid email address.";
}

if(!isset($error_message)){
    $email_body = "";
    $email_body = $email_body . "Name: " . $name . "<br>";
    $email_body = $email_body . "Email: " . $email . "<br>";
    $email_body = $email_body . "Message: " . $message;

    $mail->SetFrom($email, $name);
    $address = "orders@shirts4mike.com";
    $mail->AddAddress($address, "Shirts 4 Mike");
    $mail->Subject    = "Shirts 4 Mike Contact Form Submission | " . $name;
    $mail->MsgHTML($email_body);

    if($mail->Send()) {
        header("Location: contact.php?status=thanks");
        exit;
    }else{
        $error_message = "There was a problem sending the email: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
    }       
}
}

if(isset($error_message)){
echo $error_message;
}

2 Answers

Andrei-Robert Rusu
Andrei-Robert Rusu
763 Points
Andrei-Robert Rusu
Andrei-Robert Rusu
763 Points

Try changing this 

  if(isset($error_message)){
        echo $error_message;
  }

To this

  if(isset($error_message)){
        echo $error_message;
  } else {
        echo 'Invalid Request';
  }
Randy Hoyt
Randy Hoyt
Treehouse Guest Teacher
Randy Hoyt
Randy Hoyt
Treehouse Guest Teacher

Does it work when you enter valid information? Or do you get a blank screen then, also? (The code you pasted above works just fine for me, and I suspect the issue is that the path to the PHPMailer library file is incorrect. If that is indeed the problem, you would get a blank screen with valid data, also.)