PHP Contact Form

Developer Advocate task for SWGfL interview for Junior Web Developer Position.

Task Instructions

Produce a simple PHP Script that does the following:

• Presents an HTML form for the user to enter their:

  • Name
  • Email Address
  • Reason for Enquiry
  • Message

• Receive form input and:

  • Validate input
  • Display appropriate error messages
  • Send the entered information in an email

• Requirements

  • Build in PHP/HTML/CSS
  • Use all your own code - no libraries
  • All be in one script

• If you have time:

  • Make the page look nice

• Doesn't have to be:

  • Be class based
  • Use functions
  • Be in anymore than one file
    • An inline CSS script is fine if you get to that
  • Working (with regards to sending the email) / finished or perfect

• Once finished please email your script to us

  • It doesn't need to be uploaded to a server to show working

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What I've Learnt

As I had no experience with PHP, I watched several Youtube tutorials, researched the web for articles and tutorials and referenced the PHP Documentation to complete this task. I have included below some of the things I have learnt whilst completing this task.

Using PHP.

To enable me to view the contact page, I downloaded and am using XAMPP - this allows me to view the page I am creating on a local web server on my computer.

In my research I saw that there are two ways to add PHP to a site. The preferred way would be to create seperate PHP files for each part of the site, for example headers, footers, form validation etc. I have added the PHP to the HTML as the task instructed to use one script file.

Sending the entered information from a form through email.

While researching this I found that there is an in built function in PHP to achieve this - mail().

The mail() function has 3 required arguments: who the mail is to be sent to, the subject of the email and the body of the email.

I have chosen to also include the optional argument of headers to include the users email in the from field.

Validating a form using PHP.

There are a number of different ways to complete validation of a form using PHP, however as a beginner to using PHP I have chosen to use a method that I best understood. This method uses if else loops to check whether the field from the form has been filled out - if the field is empty it will display an error message. If the field is filled out that value will be assigned to a variable which can then be used when sending the email.

In my research I did see a PHP function filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) which can be used to check whether an email is well formed. I have not included this in my code, but plan to learn how to implement it in the future.

Displaying Error Messages.

An if else loop is used to validate the form. If a field is empty it will trigger an error message to display on the form.

I have used the PHP function isset() to check whether a field has been filled out and saved to a variable. If it has then the variable will be echoed into the input. This prevents a user having to retype all inputs on the field if they haven't filled out all required fields. The Value attribute cannot be used on a textarea so this is the only field that doesn't include this.

Displaying a Success Message.

To display a success message I am checking that each of the input variables are set with isset. If all variables contain data - the success message will be echoed.

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Code Validation

Validating PHP Code.

I used PHP Code Checker to check there were no errors in my PHP code. No errors were detected.

Validating CSS.

CSS was validated using the W3C Validator. There were no errors.

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Resources used

• Git - For version control.
• GitHub - To save and store code.
• Visual Studio Code - IDE.
• XAMPP - To allow me to build and view the project on a local web server on my computer.
• PHP Code Checker - used to check there were no errors in my PHP code.
• PHP Official Documentation - For reference
• Various YouTube videos and web articles/tutorials for research