php mail contact form not working

[william232]

Hi all

I am in the middle of setting up a php contact form for a client of mine and i am having problems reading the email upon when it arrives in my inbox on my hotmail account as it displays a blank From address in the address field in from field and since i am using windows live mail not sure what i did wrong heres a snippet of my php code.

$subject=$_POST['sub'];
    $message=$_POST['mess'];
    $ctype=$_POST['ctype'];
    $contact=$_POST['contact'];
    $capt=$_POST['capt'];
    if($sub="")
    {
        ?>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            alert('The Subject is Empty please re-enter the subject.')
        </script>
        <?    
    }
    else
    {
        //
        if($msg="")
        {
            //
            ?>
                <script type="text/javascript">
                    alert('The Message is Empty please re-enter the Message.')
                </script>
            <?    
            //
        }
        else
        {
            //
            if($contact="")
            {
                ?>
                <script type="text/javascript">
                    alert('The Contact Method is Empty please re-enter the Way you wish to be contacted..')
                </script>
                <?    
            }
            else
            {
                if($capt==$p)
                {
                    $to = "demonhunterds@hotmail.com";
                    if($ctype="email")
                    {
                        //
                        $headers = "From".$contact."";
                        echo $headers;
                        /*mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
                        echo "Mail Sent,We will respond to you asap.";
                        *///
                    }
                    else if($ctype="phone")
                    {
                        $c="You can contact them on $contact";
                        mail($to,$subject,$message,$c);
                        echo "Mail Sent,We will respond to you asap.";
                    }
                    else if($ctype="mobile")
                    {
                        $c="You can contact them on $contact";
                        mail($to,$subject,$message,$c);
                        echo "Mail Sent,We will respond to you asap.";
                    }
                    else if($ctype="fax")
                    {
                        $c="You can contact them on $contact";
                        mail($to,$subject,$message,$c);
                        echo "Mail Sent,We will respond to you asap.";
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    ?>
                    <script type="text/javascript">
                        alert('The Captcha Field is Empty please re-enter the  word  again.')
                    </script>
                    <?
                }
            }
            //
        }
        //
    }

Also on the other end is there any other way apart from captcha should i make my php contact form more secure from sending spam and what not?

Any help would be good,

Thanks,William

[Dan Grossman]

There fourth parameter to mail() is additional headers.

"You can contact them on $contact" is not a standard header. I think you meant to append that to the message, not put it in the headers.

You want something like "From: me@example.com"

[lemonzoo]

An easy way to get round this is to 'error detect'. Much better, you wont end up with loads of nested if's which prevent nice easy reading of code!

$msgStack = array();
if($case=false){
   $msgStack[] = 'error...';
}
//then test if there were any errors
if(count($msgStack>0)){
   foreach($msgStack as $msg){
      echo $msg.'<br>';
   }
} else {
   mail(...);
} 

[prasanthmj]

update the code this way:

$headers = "From: you@yourwebsite.com\r\n";
...
...
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers ); 

The following pages might help:
HTML contact form with CAPTCHA

PHP based email contact form

[kivison]

It may not be the problem but you have done what I do all the time.

if($contact="")

should be

if($contact=="")



Keith