php form mail from database submission

Question

time for a new project... i have a server that has a limit to the number of emails it can send out in a day so i thought maybe i should have the forms drop them into the database and email them as one message once a day as a single message broken by line breaks as oposed to a new message each time a form is submitted. my submission form works, as well as my look up. my while statement pulls the data out and if i echo it it shows perfectly. the only touble i am having is when i try to put the array into the mail() function. also it dows email me everytime, just with no content each time.

my while statement is as follows (with the echo left in):

while ($ctform_row = mysql_fetch_array($ctform_query, MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
echo $ctform_row['name']." - ".$ctform_row['email']." - ".$ctform_row['Phone']." - ".$ctform_row['message']." - ".$ctform_row['date']."<br />";
}

i tried to replace the echo with $message and it shows me a line at random in the email. what am i doing wrong? my form mail function is as follows:

mail($destination, $subject, $message);

Where my subject and destination are already set.

and how do you set your strings? Show us your complete code please! — jtheman
– jtheman, Commented Oct 5, 2012 at 21:39
Maybe add the lines all together by replacing the echo with: $message.=$ctform... — Wolfgang Stengel
– Wolfgang Stengel, Commented Oct 5, 2012 at 21:40

Ben D · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-05 21:41:14Z

1

Without seeing your code your description leads me to believe that you're using the assignment operator rather than the concatenation operator.

i.e. you're doing this:

$message = $ctform_row['name']." - ".$ctform_row['email']." - ".$ctform_row['Phone']." - ".$ctform_row['message']." - ".$ctform_row['date']."<br />";

and you should be doing this:

$message .= $ctform_row['name']." - ".$ctform_row['email']." - ".$ctform_row['Phone']." - ".$ctform_row['message']." - ".$ctform_row['date']."<br />";

Note the .=

Just make sure you define $message before entering the while loop ($message = "";)

answered Oct 5, 2012 at 21:41

Ben D

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1 Comment

John Stapleton Over a year ago

that worked perfectly! thanks! now to make the email look good, as of now its just lines of text with little to no formatting.

jtheman · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-05 21:44:31Z

0

You say it emails you everytime and I guess that is a problem for you. You should put all the code for collecting, sending and clearing (?!) the data in a separate PHP file, then make a cronjob on your server to send you the email every day.

answered Oct 5, 2012 at 21:44

jtheman

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3 Comments

John Stapleton Over a year ago

not everytime a form is submitted but i mentioned that it emailed me to say that the basic functionality of the mail() function works.

jtheman Over a year ago

@user1258619 OK, this sounded to me was a problem as you wrote this after "the only trouble..."

John Stapleton Over a year ago

lol, sorry about that... im a bit of a scatter brain sometimes. you should see my code before i clean it up...

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