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Home | About Us | Computer & Internet
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First off, you're going to learn how to make some simple text-only autoresponders.
To do that, we need to know three easy things: redirection, mail sending, and form submission.
Of course there are more complex autoresponders, like Gary Ambrose's Opt-In Lightning, or Wes
Baylock's Mail Master Pro which handle multiple follow-ups and record the e-mail addresses of
those who have signed up for the responder.
But today we're just going to focus on how to make a very basic, very simple autoresponder.
Hopefully, you've seen what form fields in HTML look like. Here's some code you can use for an
example:
<form action="some-script.php" method="post">
Enter Your E-Mail Address: <input type="text" name="email" size="30"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
Copy and paste this code into a file called "signup.html" and upload it to your web server. You'll
see a text box waiting for your visitor to enter his or her email address so they can be sent that
autoresponse message. Of course, the form won't work just yet because, if you look at the first
line of that HTML code I gave you, you'll see that the form submits to a script called "some-script.
php". And we haven't made that just yet.
Look on the second line of "signup.html", at the last half of the line. You should be familiar with
HTML tags, but if you're not, an HTML tag consists of two parts: the parent tag and the attributes.
The parent tag is simply the tag's designation. For example, if you had a slice of HTML code that
looked like this:
<font face="Verdana" size="1">
Then the parent tag would be "font". The rest of what's enclosed in the tag tells the browser
what to do with it. For example, in this tag the attributes are that the font should be Verdana
with size 1.
Why am I telling you all this? Because it relates to the HTML code you see in signup.html.
Now, when you look at this:
<input type="text" name="email" size="30">
The code tells the receiving browser that this is an "input" tag, meaning that it's a form field. The
name of this item is "email" and its size is 30, meaning this text box should be 30 characters in
width.
When the form is submitted, it takes all the values of all the fields inside that form and throws it
at its destination. In this case, our destination is "somescript. PHP".
If you're lost, this will all make a whole lot more sense once you try this next step.
Make a file called "some-script.php" and paste this line of code into it:
Upload the script in the same folder as signup.html, and go to "signup.html".
Type your e-mail address in and click the submit button.
You should see a new page containing just your e-mail address and nothing else.
Is this starting to make sense? You told the PHP script to dump the contents of the variable
called "email" to the screen, and you just submitted a form with a text box called "email".
If you want to try one more exercise like this, change the name of the text box to, say, "goober"
in signup.html and change the $email in some-script.php to $goober. Upload both, go to signup.
html, and type anything into the text box. You'll get the same result.
This is how you'll pass data from forms (like text fields, drop down menus, radio buttons and the
like) along into the PHP scripts you create.
We've just covered how to submit form elements into PHP. Now let's focus on sending mail.
PHP has a really simple function that uses whatever mail sending program is installed on your
server to send messages to the outside world. If you have a crappy web server, this step might
not work and you'll have to use a different web host if you want to try this.
But if you're on a good web host that has PHP installed *correctly*, this shouldn't be a problem.
Up until now we haven't used functions in PHP too much, aside from simple things like include()
and header(). Today's your lucky day, because functions work in a very similar way to HTML tags.
You have the parent tag, and the attributes (or parameters).
The mail() function basically works like this:
mail("recipient","subject","body","headers");
Let's start off by sending a simple e-mail message to yourself. We won't need any special
headers this time around, so this will be quick and painless. Copy this one line of code into
"mailtest.php":
<?PHP mail("billg@microsoft.com","Hello","Hi. This is the body of my message."); ?>
Replace "billg@microsoft.com" with your actual e-mail address, but be *sure* to keep quotes
around it. Save it, and upload mailtest.php to your web server and run it in the browser. You
should see a blank page. Wait a few minutes and check your mail. You should see a mysterious
mail message in your box with the subject "Hello" and the message "Hi. This is the body of my
message."
If you're using a free e-mail service or a weird ISP, the message won't come through because a
lot of mail servers these days require that certain headers are present in the message.
Let's do that now.
What's below isn't important enough to explain thoroughly, but it's just header information that
is interpreted by the mail server. This data tells us that we're sending a plain text e-mail, that the
message came from your e-mail address (and gives your name), and tells us that the e-mail
"client" we used was PHP.
$headers = "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii\nFrom: $myname
<$mymail>\nReply-To: <$mymail>\nReturn-Path: <$mymail>\nX-Mailer:
PHP";
This is the code you should have by this point, complete with the header information and the
variables which tell the script what your name and e-mail address are:
<?PHP
$email = "billg@microsoft.com";
$myname = "Your Name Here";
$mymail = "your@email.here";
$headers = "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii\nFrom: $myname
<$mymail>\nReply-To: <$mymail>\nReturn-Path: <$mymail>\nX-Mailer:
PHP";
mail($email,"Hello","Hi. This is the body of my message.",$headers);
?>
Notice how we've simplified things a bit by using variables in the mail() function. That way we
don't have to retype things. This method also looks better (in my opinion anyway) and is easier
to tweak once you're ready to actually customize it for yourself.
Try this out again. Believe it or not, but you just made your first autoresponder! Before we move
on let's make this look even cleaner:
<?PHP
$myname = "Your Name Here";
$mymail = "your@email.here";
$subject = "Hello";
$body = "Hi. This is the body of my message.
Notice how I can continue typing right on the next line!";
$headers = "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii\nFrom: $myname
<$mymail>\nReply-To: <$mymail>\nReturn-Path: <$mymail>\nX-Mailer:
PHP";
if ($email != "") { mail($email,$subject,$body,$headers); }
?>
All I did here was just make things look nicer, but notice how I removed the line that set $email
to "billg@microsoft.com." This is because the value of $email will be passed to the script from that
form we made earlier.
This also sends the e-mail message ONLY if the value of $email is not blank. So if someone just
hit the submit button without entering an address, the script won't try to send the e-mail
message.
Everything should be ready for you to try out now. Re-upload "some-script.php" and go to signup.
html. Enter your e-mail address in the field, hit submit and wait for that mail message to arrive.
There's only one step left to making this autoresponder complete. And that's sending the user
somewhere so they aren't given a blank page.
Find this line in your script:
if ($email != "") { mail($email,$subject,$body,$headers); }
And paste this directly underneath it:
header("Location:http://www.my.host"); die();
Put this in a text file, upload this script and try it out. You'll see that once the autoresponse
message is sent, you're directed to www.my.host (or, whatever you end up changing my.host
to). Now, go ahead and change it to whatever URL you want to use. Or, use it with a variable so
the end result is like this:
<?PHP
$myredirect = "http://www.my.host/thankyou.html";
$myname = "Your Name Here";
$mymail = "your@email.here";
$subject = "Hello";
$body = "Hi. This is the body of my message.
Notice how I can continue typing right on the next line!";
$headers = "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii\nFrom: $myname
<$mymail>\nReply-To: <$mymail>\nReturn-Path: <$mymail>\nX-Mailer:
PHP";
if ($email != "") { mail($email,$subject,$body,$headers); }
header("Location:$myredirect"); die();
?>
Don't forget to change the values above. "http://www.my.host/thankyou.html" needs to point to
the URL where thankyou.html is stored.
You're done.
Assignment
Try this code:
header("Location:mailto:email@my.host?subject=hello");
QUIZ
1. Given this text box in HTML:
<input type="text" name="email" size="30">
If this was submitted to a script using the <form> tags, what would be passed to the script?
A: The variable $email, containing whatever is written in the text box.
B: The variable $text, containing whatever is written in the text box.
C: The variable $email, containing the value "text".
D: The variable $text, containing the value "email".
2. Given this HTML code:
What is the parent tag within this HTML tag?
A: a
B: href
C: link
D: html
3. What does this code do?
header("Location:http://www.simplephp.com");
A: It doesn't do anything, it's a fraud.
B: It outputs the text "Location:http://www.simplephp.com" to the browser.
C: It redirects to http://www.simplephp.com
D: It makes a phone call to http://www.simplephp.com and tells him/her to expect three
dinner guests.
4. True or false. This code will execute properly:
<?PHP mail("shitcan@shit.can", "ergonomics" ,"jell-o pudding."); ?>
5. If this was somewhere in the *header* of an e-mail you were sending:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii\n
What would it do?
A: Not allow the message to ever leave U.S. soil.
B: Tell the recipient's e-mail client that the message is in plain text.
C: It keeps the message from being delivered for 48 hours.
D: It's kind of like Rush Delivery, but for e-mail.
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To peek at the answers, place your mouse
over the Queen with Questions on the right
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![1.[A] 2.[A] 3.[C] 4.[A] 5.[B]](../../../images/queen_with_question_ty_wht.gif) |
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However, please try to work out your answers first before peeking at the answers because you
will learn a lot better this way.
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Here is the list of lessons you can learn from the book Simple PHP:
Chapter 1 Site Personalization With PHP
Chapter 2 Password Protection With PHP
Chapter 3 Autoresponders With PHP
Chapter 4 More Autoresponders With PHP
Chapter 5 JavaScript Fun With PHP
Chapter 6 More JavaScript Fun With PHP
Chapter 7 Basic Arrays and PHP
Chapter 8 File Handling With PHP
Chapter 9 Anything of the Day With PHP
Chapter 10 Affiliate Script With PHP
Chapter 11 Our Knowledge With PHP
Chapter 12 Cookie Fun With PHP
Chapter 13 Comparison With PHP
Chapter 14 Loops With PHP
Chapter 15 A Calendar With PHP
Chapter 16 Functions With PHP
Chapter 17 Saving With PHP
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