Submit button help (please)

Question

I have tried asking for help on this topic before, but didn't get any replies. So I try again.
I have created a pdf form with a submit button that submits the form to a webservice url. I submit it as HTML.
I receive the form data just fine in my webservice, but I don't know what to return. It seems that the webservice always returns something. I have tried returning a string but get the following:
Is it possible to return a message saying that the form was receive ok or that an error occurred?
Does anyone have an example?
Thanks
Birthe

Answer 1

When you have a form, the form has to point to something so that the action of pushing a button on the page has the website do something.
<form method="post" action="dothis">
That pretty much needs to lead the form. In my case, "dothis" is a php page that does the actual heavy lifting. I do not think it is a good idea to put a "mailto" on a website because it invites spam. One might as well announce one's email address to all of the spambots in the world. I don't do that for myself and I won't do that for a client.
So, in my case, "dothis" is a php call.
Here, your question probably needs to migrate over to the php help area, but I'll offer a solution:
<?php
mail("[email protected]", $subject, $message, $from);
?>
In php, the "mail" command will tell a server (that can send an email) to send an email to the address, along with the text that you have set up for the email subject, the text of the message and the text you gathered from the form for either the name or the email address of the person filling out your form.
The "dothis" php call takes the information from the filled out form as a post and you use php to parse that posting for the information you need from your form. You can also have php check for form validity or for blanks where you don't want them and stop the script if the visitor did not fill out the form:
if(!$visitormail == "" && (!strstr($visitormail,"@") || !strstr($visitormail,".")))
echo "<h2>Use Back - Enter valid e-mail</h2>\n";
$badinput = "<h2>Your message was NOT submitted</h2>\n";
echo $badinput;
die ("Go back! ! ");
if(empty($visitor) || empty($visitormail) || empty($visitorphone) || empty($notes )) {
echo "<h2>Use your Back button - fill in all fields, No message was sent.</h2>\n";
die ("Use back! ! ");
The first "if" statement checks for something approximating a real email address, the second checks for blank fields that are required.
That should get you started.