Putting in line breaks

[Tigers!]

Gudday all
I have a long string called $message. Currently it places all the text on a single line.

<?php
...
$message = "I would a copy of the Petals & Patches catalogue send to me please - 
   Media: $media
   Name: $name 
   Address: $address 
   City/Town: $city
   State: $state
   Post code: $postcode
   Country: $country
   E-mail: $email"
....
?>

I would like to have the form of
I would a copy of the Petals & Patches catalogue send to me please -
Media: $media
Name: $name
Address: $address
City/Town: $city
State: $state
..
What would I need to do to the PHP code to achieve this?

[decowski]

Heredoc syntax.

$message = <<<TEXT
I would a copy of the Petals & Patches catalogue send to me please - 
Media: $media
Name: $name 
Address: $address 
City/Town: $city
State: $state
TEXT; 

[Stormrider]

Shouldn't make a difference, line breaks in double quoted strings get through as well.

I would guess that whatever is outputting it is expecting HTML, so you need to put <br> at the end of each line.

[Tigers!]

Sorry should have been more explicit.
An e-mail is being generated.
When those ideas still work?

[decowski]

Shouldn't make a difference, line breaks in double quoted strings get through as well.

D'oh. Of course they do .

[Salathe]

Do emails require \r\n rather than just \n? If so, convert plain newlines into carriage returns with newlines.

$message = str_replace("\n", "\r\n", $message); 

[Stormrider]

Yes, SMTP standard requires \r\n I think. Most mail servers will accept either, but the strict ones only \r\n.

You don't want to replace \n with \r\n without then making sure you replace \r\r\n with \r\n :P

[Tigers!]

Gents
Thanks for your help
I have tried the code you noted but are getting a parse error
"Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in C:\wamp\www\PetalsandPatches\cataloguetest-3.php on line 34"

Line 34 is outside the code.

I reckon the problem is the if loop but after reading the doco I am no wiser. Unless I can make use of the \r\n?

<?
...
if ($name != "" AND $address != "" AND $city != "" AND $state != "" AND $postcode != "") 
 {
  $sendto = "tlknell@somewhere.com.au"; 
  $subject = "Petals & Patches catalogue request"; 
  $message = <<<TEXT
  I would a copy of the Petals & Patches catalogue send to me please - 
  Media: $media
  Name: $name 
  Address: $address 
  City/Town: $city
  State: $state
  Post code: $postcode
  Country: $country
  E-mail: $email"; 
  TEXT; 
  // sending e-mail
  mail("$sendto", "$subject", "$message");
  //echo "Your message was sent";
  header('Location: thankyou.htm');
  exit();
 }
?>

Any advice?

[Salathe]

The line containing TEXT; needs to have no whitespace before it. The only thing that the line should contain is TEXT; - nothing more, nothing less.

[decowski]

That error means you have an unclosed block of code (in other words a missing bracket).

[Tigers!]

Gents
Here is the full PHP code

<?php
$media = $_POST['media'];
$name = $_POST['name'];
$address = $_POST['address'];
$city = $_POST['city'];
$state = $_POST['state'];
$postcode = $_POST['postcode'];
$country = $_POST['country'];
$email = $_POST['email'];

$sendto = "tlknell@tpg.com.au"; 
$subject = "Petals & Patches catalogue request"; 
$message = <<<TEXT
I would a copy of the Petals & Patches catalogue send to me please - 
Media: $media
Name: $name 
Address: $address 
City/Town: $city
State: $state
Post code: $postcode
Country: $country
E-mail: $email"; 
TEXT; 
// sending e-mail
mail("$sendto", "$subject", "$message");
header('Location: thankyou.htm');
exit();
?>

I have removed the if loop to eliminate any sort of error from that angle.
I am still getting a parse error.

[decowski]

As Salathe writes, the TEXT; line should have no whitespace before or after (except newline) and it seems you have a single space character after TEXT;.

The code does work after removing the space, as you can see.

[Tigers!]

Gents
Thank you for your help.It now works.
That whitespace after the 2nd TEXT was the blocker.

What exactly does that CODEPAD do?

[decowski]

What exactly does that CODEPAD do?

It allows you to paste code in various languages and runs it on the server and lets you see the output. Great for testing/sharing snippets of code.