Contact Form Web Application Tutorial Ajax HTML5 PHP
In this exercise we will demonstrate how to build a modern all-purpose website contact form that uses new HTML5 features, Ajax and PHP. Everything happens without reloading the page or navigating to another document to parse the data. You can put this form to work on any website that processes PHP, and you can modify it for other purposes.
Research the terms Cross-site Scripting (XSS) and Cross-Site Request Forgeries (CSRF) attacks in a search engine to find numerous methods to defend your forms against spam and automated attacks from malicious third party servers.
example.html<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Website Contact Form</title>
<script>
function _(id){ return document.getElementById(id); }
function submitForm(){
_("mybtn").disabled = true;
_("status").innerHTML = 'please wait ...';
var formdata = new FormData();
formdata.append( "n", _("n").value );
formdata.append( "e", _("e").value );
formdata.append( "m", _("m").value );
var ajax = new XMLHttpRequest();
ajax.open( "POST", "example_parser.php" );
ajax.onreadystatechange = function() {
if(ajax.readyState == 4 && ajax.status == 200) {
if(ajax.responseText == "success"){
_("my_form").innerHTML = '<h2>Thanks '+_("n").value+', your message has been sent.</h2>';
} else {
_("status").innerHTML = ajax.responseText;
_("mybtn").disabled = false;
}
}
}
ajax.send( formdata );
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form id="my_form" onsubmit="submitForm(); return false;">
<p><input id="n" placeholder="Name" required></p>
<p><input id="e" placeholder="Email Address" type="email" required></p>
<textarea id="m" placeholder="write your message here" rows="10" required></textarea>
<p><input id="mybtn" type="submit" value="Submit Form"> <span id="status"></span></p>
</form>
</body>
</html>
example_parser.php
<?php
if( isset($_POST['n']) && isset($_POST['e']) && isset($_POST['m']) ){
$n = $_POST['n']; // HINT: use preg_replace() to filter the data
$e = $_POST['e'];
$m = nl2br($_POST['m']);
$to = "you@domain.com";
$from = $e;
$subject = 'Contact Form Message';
$message = '<b>Name:</b> '.$n.' <br><b>Email:</b> '.$e.' <p>'.$m.'</p>';
$headers = "From: $from\n";
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n";
if( mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers) ){
echo "success";
} else {
echo "The server failed to send the message. Please try again later.";
}
}
?>