Sending an Email from Form using Codeigniter

Question

PROJECT OVERVIEW

I'm using the codeigniter php framework to build a standard website including a contact form, the user of the webpage should be able to enter basic contact form information.

1. Full Name
2. Email Address
3. Telephone
4. Regarding in General
5. Enquiry textarea
6. Are you a robot - question answer/captcha style question.

I've set about and created the view file for the contact form and created a corresponding controller - this includes validation using the codeigniter validation library and then a private function to send the email to the webmaster regarding the enquiry etc.

The Problem

I'm having issues getting past the form validation scenario, yet when submitting the form, I know for a fact that the data input should pass the validation tests and then pass the data to a private function to send away the email.

MY CODE

Below are my files laid bare, if anyone could spot a problem, and promtly put me in the correct direction I'd be most greatful!

Contact View

            <form method="POST" action="/contact/contactvalidate" name="contactform" id="contactform">

            <?php echo validation_errors(); ?>
            <label>Full Name:</label><br /> 
            <?php echo form_error('fullname'); ?>               
            <input type="text" name="fullname" id="fullname" maxlength="100" size="50" />
            <br />
            <label>Email:</label><br />
            <?php echo form_error('email'); ?>
            <input type="text" name="email" id="email" maxlength="100" size="50" />
            <br />
            <label>Telephone:</label>   <br />
            <?php echo form_error('telephone'); ?>
            <input type="text" name="telephone" id="telephone" maxlength="100" size="50" />
            <br />  
            <label>What is your enquiry regarding</label>   <br />
            <?php echo form_error('regarding'); ?>
            <select name="regarding" id="regarding">
                <option value="General Enquiry">General Enquiry</option>
                <option value="HR Consultancy Service">HR Consultancy Service</option>
                <option value="Business Startup Service">Business Startup Service</option>
                <option value="Solutions for Individuals">Solutions for Individuals</option>
                <option value="Other">Other</option>
            </select>
            <br />
            <label>Your Enquiry</label> <br />
            <?php echo form_error('enquiry'); ?>
            <textarea name="enquiry" id="enquiry"></textarea>       
            <br />
            <label>What is 4 + 1?</label>   <br />
            <?php echo form_error('robot'); ?>
            <input type="text" name="robot" id="robot" />               
            <br />
            <input type="submit" value="Submit Post" class="button" />



            </form>

Contact Controller

<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class Contact extends CI_Controller {

        public function index()
        {



                    $this->load->view('general/view_header');
                    $this->load->view('page/view_contact');
                    $this->load->view('general/view_footer');



        }



        public function contactvalidate()
            {
            $this->load->library('form_validation');

            if ($this->input->post('form') == 'contactform'){
                    //Set the validation rules based on the page
                    $this->form_validation->set_rules('fullname', 'Name', 'required|max_length[50]|xss_clean|prep_for_form');
                    $this->form_validation->set_rules('email', 'Email Address', 'trim|required|max_length[255]|xss_clean|valid_email|prep_for_form');
                    $this->form_validation->set_rules('telephone', 'Telephone', 'required|max_length[20]|xss_clean|prep_for_form');
                    $this->form_validation->set_rules('regarding', 'Regarding');
                    $this->form_validation->set_rules('enquiry', 'Enquiry', 'required|max_length[800]|xss_clean|prep_for_form');
                    $this->form_validation->set_rules('robot', 'Sum', 'required');
                }


                            if ($this->form_validation->run() === true)
                                        {
                                            //Send the email
                                            if($this->sendemail($_POST))
                                            {
                                                //If successful load the appropriate view
                                                redirect('/thank-you');
                                            }

                                        }
                    else{
                        //If page exists load all necessary views
                        $this->load->view('general/view_header');
                        $this->load->view('page/view_contact');
                        $this->load->view('general/view_footer');
                    }


                }



        private function sendemail($content)

        {








                    //Load the email library

                    $this->load->library('email');

                    //Initialise the email helper and set the "from"
                    $this->email->initialize(array("mailtype" => "html"));
                    $this->email->from("no-reply@lesleynowell.com", "Lesley Nowell HR Consultancy");

                    //Set the recipient, subject and message based on the page




                            //$this->email->to('enquiries@lesleynowell.com');
                            $this->email->to('adam@urbanfeather.com');
                            $this->email->subject('Website Enquirie');
                            $this->email->message("My name is: {$content["fullname"]}<br /><br />My email address is: {$content["email"]}<br /><br />My telephone number is: {$content["telephone"]}<br /><br />The enquiry is regarding: {$content["regarding"]}<br /><br />Enquiry: {$content["enquiry"]}");



                    //If the email is sent
                    if($this->email->send())
                    {
                        return true;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        return false;
                    }



        }






    }

CONCLUSION

Hopfully that's enough information to see what it is I'm doing, I believe what I've been doing to be correct, I'm not exactly sure where the fall out is to be honest.

Answer 1

Here some of my codes of sending email....i just add this in controller

Code:

function send_email($id){
        $this->emailformat($id,"10"); //i make another function that this will be call in view 
    }

    function emailformat($c_id,$days){
            $config['protocol'] = 'smtp'; // mail, sendmail, or smtp    The mail sending protocol.
            $config['smtp_host'] = '192.168.0.1'; // SMTP Server Address.
            $config['smtp_user'] = 'email@yahoo.com'; // SMTP Username.
            $config['smtp_pass'] = '12345'; // SMTP Password.
            $config['smtp_port'] = '25'; // SMTP Port. 25 is for local host
            $config['smtp_timeout'] = '5'; // SMTP Timeout (in seconds).
            $config['wordwrap'] = TRUE; // TRUE or FALSE (boolean)    Enable word-wrap.
            $config['wrapchars'] = 76; // Character count to wrap at.
            $config['mailtype'] = 'html'; // text or html Type of mail. If you send HTML email you must send it as a complete web page. Make sure you don't have any relative links or relative image paths otherwise they will not work.
            $config['charset'] = 'utf-8'; // Character set (utf-8, iso-8859-1, etc.).
            $config['validate'] = FALSE; // TRUE or FALSE (boolean)    Whether to validate the email address.
            $config['priority'] = 3; // 1, 2, 3, 4, 5    Email Priority. 1 = highest. 5 = lowest. 3 = normal.
            $config['crlf'] = "\r\n"; // "\r\n" or "\n" or "\r" Newline character. (Use "\r\n" to comply with RFC 822).
            $config['newline'] = "\r\n"; // "\r\n" or "\n" or "\r"    Newline character. (Use "\r\n" to comply with RFC 822).
            $config['bcc_batch_mode'] = FALSE; // TRUE or FALSE (boolean)    Enable BCC Batch Mode.
            $config['bcc_batch_size'] = 200; // Number of emails in each BCC batch.

                $this->load->library('email');
                $this->email->initialize($config);
                $this->email->from('email@yahoo.com', 'Robot');
                $this->email->to('email@yahoo.com');
                $this->email->subject('Expiration Notification of '.$c_id);
                $this->email->message('<html><body>This Message is to notify you that '.$c_id.' contract will expire in '.$days.' !</body></html>');
                $this->email->send();
    }

Answer 2

Fixed

It appears sadly, I should of held off making this post, as I eventually fixed and answered my own problem.

The issue was inside the contact controller

Before:

if ($this->input->post('form') == 'contactform')

After:

 if ($this->input->post()){}

It turns out after some more research if you leave the post() function empty, it selects all posted items from the contact form, before I had just simply created my own problem.

Answer 3

For sending mail you can try like this

<?Php

$this->load->library('email', $config);
$this->email->initialize($config);
$this->email->from('info@domain.com', 'Name');

$message_body='Message Content';
$email = 'abc@domain.com';
$this->email->to($email);       
$this->email->subject('Your Subjec');       
$this->email->message($message_body);
$suc=$this->email->send();
if($suc)
   {
     return true;
    }
    else
    {
      return false;
    }
?>