How can I submit info and then forward to another page?

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November 15th, 2001, 10:16 AM

mrstang

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Join Date: Nov 2001

Posts: 7

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How can I submit info and then forward to another page?

I'm not a complete Newbie, but I am trying to do the following and came to the experts for help.

Our company wants to revise our webpages (boy, they certainly need it -- somebody else did them before I got here). We now want to add a page that includes a form that asks for their name and email address, requiring that they opt-in to our mailing list.

What I have set up is a normal HTML page that includes the forms for Name, Address, and Email Address, etc. Below is the code that I have that works to post the information to my email address here at work, but how can I get it to simulataneously post it to my email address and then forward in the browser to the download page to get our newsletter file?

THANK YOU ahead of time for any help you can give me on this matter. I would like to get this resolved as soon as possible.

Barry

<FORM ACTION="mailto

romotions@thecapitalcorp.com" METHOD="POST" ENCTYPE="text/plain">

<P>Name: <INPUT NAME="name" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P>

<P>Address: <INPUT NAME="address" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P>

<P>City: <INPUT NAME="city" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P>

<P>State: <INPUT NAME="state" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P>

<P>ZIP Code: <INPUT NAME="zip code" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P>

<P>Phone Number: <INPUT NAME="phone" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P>

<P>Email Address: <INPUT NAME="email" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P>

<p>Please include any message you would like to send to us as well:<BR>
<TEXTAREA NAME="Please Include Any Message:" ROWS="50" COLS="50" WRAP="virtual"></TEXTAREA></P>

<P>
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Submit"> <INPUT TYPE="reset" VALUE="Reset form"></P>
</FORM>

November 15th, 2001, 11:25 AM

AlCapone

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It would be much easier to do it with any server-side prog language, but you could use js and make it that way so when button is clicked, form is submitted and location changes.

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November 15th, 2001, 11:36 AM

mrstang

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Do you have an example?

I've tried using some javascript to make it work, but it is not working. Do you have some specific code that I can try to work?

Barry

November 15th, 2001, 10:34 PM

Dr_Jay

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If your script is written in PHP, why not just send an http redirect header after the page has been processed? At the end of your code that actually processes the form, add:

header("Location: URL");

Dr_Jay

November 16th, 2001, 06:03 PM

scottiej

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i need to redirect as well, what if you are checking cases after you submit, and want to redirect if there are no errors

something like:

if (there are no errors)
redirect
else
stay on this page

Thanks in advance

November 16th, 2001, 08:06 PM

Humble Seeker

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I think your giving yourself more problems trying to do this with javascript. As Dr_Jay suggested you'r be better of doing this in PHP or some other scripting language. At the moment your approach is internet explorer dependant, netscape 6 dosen't carry the information a cross to the e-mail, at least not on my comp. Also using a server script gives you more control over the who process.

scottiej, try this code checks to make sure that the e-mail is valid, it is it moves to the pages specified in the action part of the form tag. If the e-mail is invalid it goes back to the e-mail input. This validation script is easy to adapt, you only really need checkForm(currForm) with a suitable expression in there.

<html>

<head>
<title>Easy as Pie</title>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" TYPE="TEXT/JAVASCRIPT">
//-- E-mail Validation ---------------------------------------------------------//

function validEmail (email)
{

invalidChars = " /:,;"

if (email == "")
{
return false
}

if (email == "E-mail address")
{
return false
}

for (i=0; i < invalidChars.length; i++)
{
badChar = invalidChars.charAt(i)
if (email.indexOf(badChar, 0) > -1)
{
return false
}
}
atPos = email.indexOf("@", 1)
if (atPos == -1)
{
return false
}

if (email.indexOf("@", atPos + 1) > -1)
{
return false
}
periodPos = email.indexOf (".", atPos)

if (periodPos == -1)
{
return false
}

if (periodPos+3 > email.length)
{
return false
}

return true
}

function checkForm(currForm)
{
if(!validEmail(currForm.email.value))
{
alert("Invalid e-mail address")
currForm.email.focus()
currForm.email.select()
return false
}

return true
}
</SCRIPT>
</head>

<body>
<FORM onSubmit="return checkForm(this) " METHOD=POST ACTION="/Default.asp">
<INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="email" VALUE="E-mail address" SIZE=20><BR>
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME="newsLetter" VALUE="Submit">
</FORM>
</body>

</html>

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November 18th, 2001, 12:46 PM

munkfish

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Well, we've got the JavaScript eh? Here's a bit of PHP you could use to take the details a users submits and add them to a file, 'email_list.txt' (in the same directory as the script itself).

I don't know how much you know about PHP, but you could do worse than just placing the script in your webserver's document root (or a subdir of it) and just trying it out

Here's the script - very very simple (apart maybe from the array bit;\) and doesn't do any error checking - I'll leave that for you!

PHP Code:


		
			
<?php

// author: <jez han****> ockham_razerAThotmail.com

// 18.11.2001



// mailer.php

// simple mailing script

// get a user's email address from a form, add the email address to a file

// and then redirect the user to our newsletter



// First let's set up some parameters we'll need in the script:



// This variable contains the name of the file we want to save our email address

// submissions to:

$file="email_list.txt";



// location of the newsletter to forward the user to:

// note you need to change this otherwise the script may die!

// use the full URL to the newsletter on the server to be sure

// ie [url]http://mysite.com/news/newsletter.htm[/url]

// (but experiment!)

$newsletter="newsletter.htm";



// Check to see if the form has been submitted:

if($submit=="Submit"){

    // open the email list file for writing:

    $fp=fopen($file, "a") or die("unable to open file $file for writing");



    // assign the form items to an array variable:

    $content=array($name, $address, $city, $state, $zip, $email);

    

    // this creates a list like: name||address||city|| etc...

    $content=join("||", $content);

    

    // write the info to the file:

    fputs($fp, $content);



    // close the file:

    fclose($fp);



    // redirect the user to your newsletter page:

    header("Location: newsletter.htm");        

} else {

    // Form hasn't been submitted yet, display the form:

    // Note we go out of 'PHP mode' to display the HTML here! //

?>

<FORM ACTION="<?php print $PHP_SELF ?>" METHOD="POST"> 

<P>Name: <INPUT NAME="name" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P> 

<P>Address: <INPUT NAME="address" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P> 

<P>City: <INPUT NAME="city" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P> 

<P>State: <INPUT NAME="state" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P> 

<P>ZIP Code: <INPUT NAME="zip" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P> 

<P>Phone Number: <INPUT NAME="phone" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P> 

<P>Email Address: <INPUT NAME="email" TYPE="text" VALUE="" SIZE="50" MAXLENGTH="50"></P> 

<p>Please include any message you would like to send to us as well:<BR> 

<TEXTAREA NAME="Please Include Any Message:" ROWS="50" COLS="50" WRAP="virtual"></TEXTAREA></P> 

<P> 

<INPUT TYPE="submit" NAME="submit" VALUE="Submit"> <INPUT TYPE="reset" VALUE="Reset form"></P> 

</FORM> 

<?php } ?>

Heavily commented I'm noticing!!! Can't have too many comments IMO heh

hope that helps/works for you

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November 28th, 2001, 03:12 PM

preemi

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Join Date: Nov 2001

Location: Chicago

Posts: 81

Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
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Try using PHP and MySQL

Someone else said use PHP and write it to a file, but it is much smarter to write it to a database. Simply use PHP and MySQL, make sure they are available on the server. When the user hits submit, you want to save all the variables that they enter. In this case, we would want to insert them into your database. At the top of the parsing page (the one you specify in <form action="">) you will have a script to insert the info into the database. Then, you will have plain HTML and embedded PHP to print out the info that they entered. I'm at schol right now, so I doubt my code will be perfect, but e-mail if you have questions.

put the <html> form here and point it to a PHP file.

<?
session_start();

$db_name = "name of your database";
$table_name= "name of your table";
$connection = (login info);
$sql = "INSERT into $db_name (id, fname, lname, email)
VALUES (\"\", \"$fname\", \"$lname\", \"$email\")";
$result = @mysql($connection, $sql);

?>

This will insert the values (shown with the $) that the user entered, into a database. Leave (\"\") for the id, since you will probably want it to be auto-incrementing so if you leave it blank, it will add the next value.

Finally, at the bottom of the same script, you want to add the stuff the user will see.

<html>
<table>
<tr><td>Name:</td><td><? echo "$fname $lname"; ?></td></tr>
<tr><td>Email:</td><td><? echo "$email"; ?></td></tr>
</html>

Thats about it, but like I said, if you have questions, feel free to email me

November 28th, 2001, 03:30 PM

AlCapone

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Location: "Best City" 2002 and 2003- Melbourne, Australia

Posts: 4,913

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preemi, I have few questions to your example:
1) why do you have session_start and dont use sessions at all
2) you do not connect to mysql
3) why bother escaping " if you can use ' around vars
4) if you dont use returned info from mysql why bother assigning var to it?
5) whats that 'mysql()' thingy? there is no such function.
6) you forgot to close </table>

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