simple email form
Below is a simple html email form and associated Perl script used to process the information. Please feel free to use the code, but note - the code has been modified to display on the page rather than execute in the browser.
Please also note we can't provide support so don't email asking for help to get it working - you're getting it free aren't you? :-)
This simple form has no field vaidation or error checking. There is a brief description of how the form works at the bottom of the page. The example here works on UNIX, Linux servers etc. It is not designed for Windows servers.
Html Email Form Code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> New Document </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<form action="cgi-bin/email_process.cgi" method="post">
<table border="0">
<TR>
<TD COLSPAN="2">Please fill in the details below to send us a message</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD colspan="2"> </TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD align="left" width="20%"><B>Name:</B></TD>
<TD><input type="text" name="fname"></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD align="left" width="20%"><b>Email Address:</b></TD>
<TD><input type="text" name="email_add"></TD>
</TR>
<TR><TD ALIGN=left valign="top" width="20%"><b>Message:</b></TD>
<TD><textarea name="email_msg" rows="20" cols="30"></textarea></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD colspan="2"> </TD></TR>
<TR><TD colspan="2"><center><INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Send Message"></center></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</form>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Associated Perl Script:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use CGI;
my $cgiobject = new CGI;
my $fname=$cgiobject->param("fname");
my $email_add=$cgiobject->param("email_add");
my $email_msg=$cgiobject->param("email_msg");
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
open (MAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail your.name\@yourdomain.com") || &errormess;
print MAIL "From: $email_add\n";
print MAIL "Reply-to: $email_add\n";
print MAIL "Subject: Email From Your Website\n";
print MAIL "Name $fname\n";
print MAIL "email $email_add\n";
print MAIL "Msg $email_msg\n";
close(MAIL);
print <<"html";
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> Contact Us </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY >
<H4>Thank you - your message has been sent. You will be contacted shortly.
</BODY>
</HTML>
html
exit;
sub errormess {
print "<BR>Problem sending mail Aborting\n";
exit;
}
Brief Overview:
The email form takes in 3 parameters, Name, Email and Message:
<input type="text" name="fname">
<input type="text" name="email_add">
<textarea name="email_msg" rows="20" cols="30"></textarea>
These values are picked up by the Perl script via a cgi object and assigned to 3 variables:
my $fname=$cgiobject->param("fname");
my $email_add=$cgiobject->param("email_add");
my $email_msg=$cgiobject->param("email_msg");
Notice that the name in bold must be the same in both the html form and Perl script.
The script then send the mesasge out:
open (MAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail your.name\@yourdomain.com") || &errormess;
/usr/lib/sendmail is the path to your sendmail program (your web host can give you this information) and the email address used (your.name\@yourdomain.com in this example) MUST have a backslash before the @ sign as this is a special character in Perl.
Finally the script displays a mesasge back to the browser:
print <<"html_msg";
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> Contact Us </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY >
<H4>Thank you - your message has been sent. You will be contacted shortly.
</BODY>
</HTML>
html_msg
Please note the 'html_msg' tag on the last line must start in column one or the script will fail.
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