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There is something about feedback forms, something I consistently fail to realize. The thrill and excitement of watching web viewers send information over the Internet, and knowing you control the entire process is utterly invigorating. Perhaps it's the PHP language I enjoy using so much. Perhaps it's the e-mail I enjoy receiving and responding to. In any event, PHP feedback forms are powerful utilities, and this article will teach you how to develop and create one all your own.

Before we begin, if you don't have PHP installed on your web server, point your browser to php.net and download yourself a free copy for either Windows or Linux. Once installed, you're ready to experience how easy it is to create a mail processing script in PHP. Let's take a look at how variables are used.

Simply put, your form element names will automatically be created as variables by PHP, and will be populated with the value that the user has inputted, or selected, or clicked, etc. Below is an example of a simple text box named 'Lastname'.

So, PHP will create a variable named 'Lastname' and will fill it with the information the user supplied the text box with. To recall the variable within the mail script, simply place a dollar sign in front of the variable. In this case, to call the value of Lastname, simply use $Lastname. Let's look at how we'll use form variables with PHP's mail() command.

The mail() command is the most basic and simplest way of sending e-mail, which contacts your system's smtp server as specified in PHP's configuration files. The command looks like this:

Optional headers can contain a 'From' address, for example. There are a couple ways you can setup the mail script. First, let's initialize each variable, then put those variables in the mail() command.

Example 1.1

First, we have declared and initialized three variables, $mailto, $msgSubject and $msgBody. Remember, within the message body, only include variables which you have asked for in your actual form, and keep in mind PHP is case sensitive, so $Name is different from $name. We then popped those variables into PHP's mail() command, along with an additional header, From. So, 'your@address.com' will receive an e-mail with a subject of 'Your Subject' and a body that'll read 'Variables here, like $Name, $Comments, etc'. Of course, the variables $Name and $Comments will be parsed, and the value behind those variables will be sent in place of the variable name.

Within the body, you may want to skip a line or two for readability of the message. That is easily done with the \n command. So, taking the above example, if you wanted a line space in-between $Name and $Comments, try this:

Simple enough? Now, let's take a look at another example using the mail() command but without initializing any variables first.

Both examples will yield the same result, but the code technique comes down to what your personal preferences are. You may take this code and play around with it until you get exactly what you're looking for.

Let's take this a step further. What happens if a visitor wants to play around and submit a bunch of blank forms? What if you want only certain form fields to be required, and the form will not submit unless data has been supplied to those fields? Go ahead and move on to my next article in this series which checks field integrity.