Contact form - success message - forms

Question

I am using a contact form and at the moment when you submit your details you are brought to a new page with a "thank you" message. I don't want users to be re-directed to a new page and instead I would like the "thank you" message to be displayed on the same page as the form. The code I am using is below.
Contact form code:
<form name="htmlform" method="post" action="html_form_send.php">
<table width="450px">
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="first_name">First Name *</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<input type="text" name="first_name" maxlength="50" size="30">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top"">
<label for="last_name">Last Name *</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<input type="text" name="last_name" maxlength="50" size="30">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="email">Email Address *</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<input type="text" name="email" maxlength="80" size="30">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="telephone">Telephone Number</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<input type="text" name="telephone" maxlength="30" size="30">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<label for="comments">Comments *</label>
</td>
<td valign="top">
<textarea name="comments" maxlength="1000" cols="25" rows="6"></textarea>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" style="text-align:center">
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
PHP code to send form:
<?php
if(isset($_POST['email'])) {
// CHANGE THE TWO LINES BELOW
$email_to = "you#yourdomain.com";
$email_subject = "website html form submissions";
function died($error) {
// your error code can go here
echo "We are very sorry, but there were error(s) found with the form you submitted. ";
echo "These errors appear below.<br /><br />";
echo $error."<br /><br />";
echo "Please go back and fix these errors.<br /><br />";
die();
}
// validation expected data exists
if(!isset($_POST['first_name']) ||
!isset($_POST['last_name']) ||
!isset($_POST['email']) ||
!isset($_POST['telephone']) ||
!isset($_POST['comments'])) {
died('We are sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the form you submitted.');
}
$first_name = $_POST['first_name']; // required
$last_name = $_POST['last_name']; // required
$email_from = $_POST['email']; // required
$telephone = $_POST['telephone']; // not required
$comments = $_POST['comments']; // required
$error_message = "";
$email_exp = '/^[A-Za-z0-9._%-]+#[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,4}$/';
if(!preg_match($email_exp,$email_from)) {
$error_message .= 'The Email Address you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
$string_exp = "/^[A-Za-z .'-]+$/";
if(!preg_match($string_exp,$first_name)) {
$error_message .= 'The First Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(!preg_match($string_exp,$last_name)) {
$error_message .= 'The Last Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(strlen($comments) < 2) {
$error_message .= 'The Comments you entered do not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(strlen($error_message) > 0) {
died($error_message);
}
$email_message = "Form details below.\n\n";
function clean_string($string) {
$bad = array("content-type","bcc:","to:","cc:","href");
return str_replace($bad,"",$string);
}
$email_message .= "First Name: ".clean_string($first_name)."\n";
$email_message .= "Last Name: ".clean_string($last_name)."\n";
$email_message .= "Email: ".clean_string($email_from)."\n";
$email_message .= "Telephone: ".clean_string($telephone)."\n";
$email_message .= "Comments: ".clean_string($comments)."\n";
// create email headers
$headers = 'From: '.$email_from."\r\n".
'Reply-To: '.$email_from."\r\n" .
'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
#mail($email_to, $email_subject, $email_message, $headers);
?>
<!-- place your own success html below -->
Thank you for contacting us. We will be in touch with you very soon.
<?php
}
die();
?>

Answer 1

If you're wanting to refresh the page to the same location on which the form is located and display the results on the same page, then you could try this:
replace
<form name="htmlform" method="post" action="html_form_send.php">
with the following (so that you refresh the same page as the form).
<form name="htmlform" action="" method="post">
Adjust your submit button by giving it a name:
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
and then validate whether the post has been submitted by checking if 'submit is set, rather than email...
if(isset($_POST['submit'])) { rather than if(isset($_POST['email'])) {
Then move the thankyou message code from the file 'html_form_send.php' to above your form code in the original file.
This should POST the data from the form to the same page on which the form is located, and only display the thank you message if the page detects that the form has been submitted... So long as you enclose any printed/echo'd thank you message inside the if(isset($_POST['submit'])) { brackets - i.e. in here } then it should work.
If you want to check if the form has been submitted without refreshing the page you'll need to look in to AJAX, but that is a bit more complicated.