[SOLVED] How do I put a link in a string?

[flowingwindrider]

I'm attempting to insert a link into the body of an email that I'm creating using the mail() function. Since everything in the $message variable is inside quotations, the link keeps printing the html code instead of creating a link. Can anyone help?

 

Sorry if this is a n00b question; I'm very new to PHP. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[cooldude832]

code would be great, but yes you can as long as you escape quotes, and your email is a html email

 

$body .= "<a href=\"mypage.html\">Click Here</a>";  //Note the \ before the " to escape them

[flowingwindrider]

Sorry, but this just prints as text as well. I defined the variable

 

$cancel .= "<a href=\"brasonentertainersguild.com/cancel.htm\"click here[/url]";

 

and then put the $cancel variable into the $message variable of my email.

 

Where am I going wrong?

[teng84]

show us the piece of your code pls

[flowingwindrider]

I've defined the $cancel variable as

 

$cancel .= "<a href=\"brasonentertainersguild.com/cancel.htm\"click here[/url]";

 

This goes into the body of the email as follows:

 

$pfw_header = "From: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"

  . "Reply-To: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n";

$pfw_subject = "Your Ad Has Been Received";

$pfw_email_to = "$Email";

$pfw_message = "Thank you for your submission! We will post your ad online as soon as possible. Your ad will automatically expire one month from today.\n"

."\n"

. "Your Confirmation Number is: $conf_no. Please  $cancel if you'd like to cancel your ad before its expiration date.\n"

. "\n"

. "- Branson Entertainers Guild";

@mail($pfw_email_to, $pfw_subject ,$pfw_message ,$pfw_header ) ;

[cooldude832]

first off you are closing your anchor wrong

not [/url] its </a> secondly you never declared your email as an html message so it defautls to a text message and thus it shows it as text.

[flowingwindrider]

Ok, I've fixed the anchor tag (and feel pretty dumb about that mistake). How do I declare the email as html?

 

Thanks so much for the help.

[teng84]

// Always set content-type when sending HTML email

$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";

$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";

[cooldude832]

also make sure you include a textual based link (not a anchor) because many email anti virus softwares will block anchors if they aren't from like google or ebay.  Use the customary

<a>click here</a> or copy and paste:

www.page.com

into your browser...

[BillyBoB]

is there a reason you guys are using two different tags??? you use html (<a>) then you use bbcode ([/url]) ??? this doesnt make any sense

 

[cooldude832]

he already realzied he mixed them the anchor is proper in this case

[AndyB]

I'm attempting to insert a link into the body of an email that I'm creating using the mail() function. Since everything in the $message variable is inside quotations, the link keeps printing the html code instead of creating a link. Can anyone help?

 

Quick tip: if you post code in this forum between CODE tags, your links will not be changed to url

 

Possible solution to your problem. You have declared the mime type of the message to be text/html ... ?

[flowingwindrider]

// Always set content-type when sending HTML email

$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";

$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";

 

Well, clearly I'm still quite uneducated when it comes to PHP. I still can quite figure this out. my code now looks like this:

 

$pfw_header = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$pfw_header .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$pfw_header = "From: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"
  . "Reply-To: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n";
$pfw_subject = "Your Ad Has Been Received";
$pfw_email_to = "$Email";
$pfw_message = "Thank you for your submission! We will post your ad online as soon as possible. Your ad will automatically expire one month from today.\n"
."\n"
. "Your Confirmation Number is: $conf_no. Please  $cancel if you'd like to cancel your ad before its expiration date.\n"
. "\n"
. "- Branson Entertainers Guild";
@mail($pfw_email_to, $pfw_subject ,$pfw_message ,$pfw_header ) ;

with the $cancel variable defined as

$cancel .= "<a href=\"brasonentertainersguild.com/cancel.htm\"click here</a>";

 

Please put your code in CODE tags

 

 

[AndyB]

$pfw_header = "From: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"
  . "Reply-To: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n";

 

Should be ... concatenating $pfw_header:

 

$pfw_header .= "From: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"
  . "Reply-To: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n";

[nloding]

Like the guy above me said, use the CODE tags (the # sign above the reply box) to clarify your code.

 

$pfw_header = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$pfw_header .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$pfw_header = "From: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"
  . "Reply-To: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n";
$pfw_subject = "Your Ad Has Been Received";
$pfw_email_to = "$Email";
$pfw_message = "Thank you for your submission! We will post your ad online as soon as possible. Your ad will automatically expire one month from today.\n"
."\n"
. "Your Confirmation Number is: $conf_no. Please  $cancel if you'd like to cancel your ad before its expiration date.\n"
. "\n"
. "- Branson Entertainers Guild";
@mail($pfw_email_to, $pfw_subject ,$pfw_message ,$pfw_header ) ;

 

with the $cancel variable defined as

 

$cancel .= "<a href=\"brasonentertainersguild.com/cancel.htm\">click here</a>";

 

Now I think you were missing a closing bracket on the <a> anchor ... what you had was:

 

"<a href=\"bransonentertainersguild.com/cancel.htm\"clickhere</a>";

[flowingwindrider]

So now my $cancel variable is defined as:

 

$cancel .= "<a href=\"brasonentertainersguild.com/cancel.htm\">click here</a>";

 

and the rest of the code is:

 

$pfw_header = "From: $Email\n"
  . "Reply-To: $Email\n";
  . "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
  . "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$pfw_subject = "New Classified Ad - Automobiles";
$pfw_email_to = "classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com";
$pfw_message = "Visitor's IP: $pfw_ip\n"
. "Price: $Price\n"
. "Manufacturer: $Manufacturer\n"
. "Model: $Model\n"
. "Year: $Year\n"
. "Mileage: $Mileage\n"
. "Color: $Color\n"
. "Accessories: $Accessories\n"
. "Description: $Description\n"
. "Email: $Email\n"
. "Telephone: $Telephone\n"
. "Picture1: $Picture1_URL\n"
. "Picture2: $Picture2_URL\n"
. "Picture3: $Picture3_URL\n"
. "Confirmation No: $conf_no\n";
@mail($pfw_email_to, $pfw_subject ,$pfw_message ,$pfw_header ) ;

 

Am I getting close?

[flowingwindrider]

Sorry, I pasted the wrong code fragment in the message above.

 

The $cancel variable is defined as:

 

$cancel .= "<a href=\"brasonentertainersguild.com/cancel.htm\">click here</a>";

 

but the rest of the code should read as follows:

 

$pfw_header = "From: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"
  . "Reply-To: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n";
  . "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
  . "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$pfw_subject = "Your Ad Has Been Received";
$pfw_email_to = "$Email";
$pfw_message = "Thank you for your submission! We will post your ad online as soon as possible. Your ad will automatically expire one month from today.\n"
."\n"
. "Your Confirmation Number is: $conf_no. Please  $cancel if you'd like to cancel your ad before its expiration date.\n"
. "\n"
. "- Branson Entertainers Guild";
@mail($pfw_email_to, $pfw_subject ,$pfw_message ,$pfw_header ) ;

 

Sorry for the confusion.

[AndyB]

First - get rid of the @ (error suppression) in the mail function.

 

Next: $pfw_email_to = "$Email"; should be $pfw_email_to = $Email; and I assume that $Email is defined somewhere as a real live email address ('free' email accounts are notoriously unreliable with mail())

[flowingwindrider]

Yes, $Email is defined earlier in the script. Actually, it is gathered from a form that this script is processing.

 

My code now looks like this:

 

$pfw_header = "From: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"
  . "Reply-To: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n";
  . "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
  . "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$pfw_subject = "Your Ad Has Been Received";
$pfw_email_to = $Email;
$pfw_message = "Thank you for your submission! We will post your ad online as soon as possible. Your ad will automatically expire one month from today.\n"
."\n"
. "Your Confirmation Number is: $conf_no. Please  $cancel if you'd like to cancel your ad before its expiration date.\n"
. "\n"
. "- Branson Entertainers Guild";
mail($pfw_email_to, $pfw_subject ,$pfw_message ,$pfw_header ) ;

 

I get an error message every time the server hits the . "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n"; line in my code.

[AndyB]

I get an error message every time the server hits the . "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n"; line in my code.

 

Remove the ; from the preceding line (which terminated the string you were trying to concatenate).

 

I think we're getting closer.

[flowingwindrider]

You are so cool to keep sticking with me on this, and we are getting closer. I've removed the extra semicolons and now the script processes the form. However, the in the email it sends me the link doesn't work. Meaning, the text 'click here' is underlined and blue (so far so good) but it doesn't appear to lead anywhere. No information about the page the link should take you to appears at the bottom of my browser when I hover over the link, either.

 

My code now reads as:

 

$pfw_header = "From: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"
  . "Reply-To: classifieds@bransonentertainersguild.com\n"
  . "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n"
  . "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$pfw_subject = "Your Ad Has Been Received";
$pfw_email_to = $Email;
$pfw_message = "Thank you for your submission! We will post your ad online as soon as possible. Your ad will automatically expire one month from today.\n"
."\n"
. "Your Confirmation Number is: $conf_no. Please  $cancel if you'd like to cancel your ad before its expiration date.\n"
. "\n"
. "- Branson Entertainers Guild";
mail($pfw_email_to, $pfw_subject ,$pfw_message ,$pfw_header ) ;

 

Thanks again.

[AndyB]

I assume the $cancel variable is still defined ... somewhere.

 

A reasonable form for it would be  as below. No concatenation needed in the definition:

 

$cancel = "<a href='bransonentertainersguild.com/cancel.htm'>click here</a>";

 

I hope that does it, because it's past my bedtime

[flowingwindrider]

Nope, still doesn't actually have a link although I've defined the $cancel variable just as you had it. I don't know what the problem is, but thanks for everything and have a great night's sleep! 

[AndyB]

Your email program should allow you to see the html source of the message sent. That should give you ample clues as to what the end result actually is, and thus point you towards solving the last little problem.