Feedback form is used to get the review from the user through mail services. Mailing is one of the server-side utilities that is required in most of the web servers today. In PHP, mail() is the built-in function that is used to send emails from PHP scripts either in a plain-text form or formatted HTML. You can also write a script to attach any files into your mail from send Attachment With Email article.
The PHP mail function has the following basic Syntax:
<?php mail($to_email_address, $subject, $message, [$headers], [$parameters]); ?>
Attaching file in feedback form: To send an email with attachment as feedback, we need to use the multipart/mixed MIME type(set Content-type header to multipart/mixed) that specifies that mixed types will be included in the email. Moreover, we want to use a multipart/alternative MIME type to send both plain-text and HTML versions of the email. Text and attachment sections can be specified within boundaries. A boundary is started with two hyphens followed by a unique number that can not appear in the message part of the email. A PHP function md5() is used to create a 32 digit hexadecimal number to create a unique number. A final boundary denoting the email’s final section must also end with two hyphens.
To include an attachment to our message, we read the data from the specified file into a string, encode it with base64_encode() function for safer transmission, split it in smaller chunks with the chunk_split() function to make sure that it matches the MIME specifications and then include it as an attachment.
Example:
<?php $Msg = '' ;   if (isset( $_FILES [ "file" ][ "name" ]) && isset( $_POST [ 'email' ])) {     $toemail = $_POST [ 'email' ];     $name = $_POST [ 'name' ];     $subject = $_POST [ 'subject' ];     $message = $_POST [ 'message' ];     $fromemail = "hosth914@gmail.com" ;     $msg = '<h2 style= "color:green;" >neveropen</h2>                     <p><b>Hello, '.$name.' </b></p></br>                     <p><b>Message:</b> '.$message.' </p>';                           $msg = "Please find the attachment<br/>Thank You." ;     $s_m = md5(uniqid(time()));     $headers = "From: " . $fromemail ;     $mime_boundary = "==Multipart_Boundary_x{$s_m}x" ;         $headers .= "\nMIME-Version: 1.0\n" .     "Content-Type: multipart/mixed;\n" .     " boundary=\"{$mime_boundary}\"" ;         if ( $_FILES [ "file" ][ "name" ]!= "" ){          $file_name = $_FILES [ "file" ][ "name" ];             $content = chunk_split ( base64_encode (             file_get_contents ( $_FILES [ "file" ][ "tmp_name" ])));              $msg .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\n\n" .             "--{$mime_boundary}\n" .             "Content-Type:text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\n" .             "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\n" .             $msg .= "\n\n" ;             $msg .= "--{$mime_boundary}\n" .             "Content-Type: application/octet-stream;\n" .             " name=\"{$file_name}\"\n" .                   // "Content-Disposition: attachment;\n" .             // " filename=\"{$fileatt_name}\"\n" .             "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n\n" .             $content  .= "\n\n" .             "--{$mime_boundary}--\n" ;     }        if (mail( $toemail , $subject , $msg , $headers )){         $Msg = "Email send successfully with attachment" ;     } else {         $Msg = "Email Not sent" ;     } } ?>    <!DOCTYPE html> <html>    <head>     <title>Sending file attachment with email</title>     <meta charset= "utf-8" >     <meta name= "viewport"           content= "width=device-width, initial-scale=1" >     <link rel= "stylesheet" href=     <script src=     </script>     <script src=     </script>     <script src=     </script>     <style>         form {             box-shadow: 10px 10px 40px grey;             padding: 50px;             margin: 20px;         }     </style> </head>    <body>     <?php if (! empty ( $Msg )){ ?>         <p class = "text-success text-center" >             <?php echo $Msg ; ?>         </p>     <?php } ?>           <form method= "post" action= ""             enctype= "multipart/form-data"             class = "w-75 mx-auto" >         <h1 class = "text-success text-center" >             neveropen         </h1>                   <h5 class = "text-success text-center" >             Sending email with a             file attachment         </h5>                   <div class = "form-group" >             <input type= "text" name= "name"                 class = "form-control"                 placeholder= "Name" required= "" >         </div>                   <div class = "form-group" >             <input type= "email" name= "email"                 class = "form-control"                 placeholder= "Email address" required= "" >         </div>                   <div class = "form-group" >             <input type= "text" name= "subject"                 class = "form-control"                 placeholder= "Subject" required= "" >         </div>                   <div class = "form-group" >             <textarea name= "message"                 class = "form-control"                 placeholder= "Write your message here..."                 required= "" >             </textarea>         </div>                   <div class = "form-group" >             <input type= "file" name= "file" >         </div>                   <div class = "submit text-center" >             <input type= "submit" name= "submit"                 class = "btn btn-success "                 value= "SEND MESSAGE" >         </div>     </form> </body>    </html> |
Output:
- Feedback form GUI:
- After receiving mail:
Using mail() on localhost on XAMPP: Sending mail from the localhost can be done using Sendmail package, Sendmail package is inbuild in XAMPP.
- Step 1: In C:\xampp\php\php.ini find extension=php_openssl.dll and remove the semicolon from the beginning of that line to make SSL working for gmail for localhost.
- Step 2: In php.ini file find [mail function] and change
SMTP=smtp.gmail.com smtp_port=587 sendmail_from = gmail-id@gmail.com sendmail_path = "\"C:\xampp\sendmail\sendmail.exe\" -t"
- Step 3: In C:\xampp\sendmail\sendmail.ini. Replace all the existing code in sendmail.ini with following code:
[sendmail] smtp_server=smtp.gmail.com smtp_port=587 error_logfile=error.log debug_logfile=debug.log auth_username=gmail-id@gmail.com auth_password=gmail-password force_sender=gmail-id@gmail.com
- Step 4: Change gmail-id@gmail.com and gmail-password as required. Restart the server the XAMMP control panel so the changes take effect.
- Step 5: Create a php file and send mail.
Note: However, the PHP mail() function is a part of the PHP core but you need to set up a mail server on your machine to make it really work.