Generate a number in the subject line for a contact form

Question

I have a contact form which consists of following fields:

• First name
• Last name
• Phone
• Email
• and Comment

Whenever the user submitting this form to my email so the subject value should take an auto Number automatically generated by PHP.

Here is what I have so far

<?php

if(isset($_POST['email'])) {
    // EDIT THE 2 LINES BELOW AS REQUIRED
    $email_to = "wouldn't want some spam mail would ya?";      
    $email_subject = "New Property From Customer";

    function died($error) {   
        // your error code can go here
        echo "We are very sorry, but there were error(s) found with the form you submitted. ";
        echo "These errors appear below.<br /><br />";
        echo $error."<br /><br />";
        echo "Please go back and fix these errors.<br /><br />";

        die();
    }

    // validation expected data exists
    if (!isset($_POST['first_name']) ||
        !isset($_POST['last_name']) ||
        !isset($_POST['email']) ||
        !isset($_POST['telephone']) ||
        !isset($_POST['comments'])) {
        died('We are sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the form you submitted.');      
    }

    $first_name = $_POST['first_name']; // required
    $last_name = $_POST['last_name']; // required
    $email_from = $_POST['email']; // required
    $telephone = $_POST['telephone']; // not required
    $comments = $_POST['comments']; // required

    $error_message = "";

    $email_exp = '/^[A-Za-z0-9._%-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,4}$/';

    if (!preg_match($email_exp,$email_from)) {
        $error_message .= 'The Email Address you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
    }

    $string_exp = "/^[A-Za-z .'-]+$/";

    if (!preg_match($string_exp,$first_name)) {
        $error_message .= 'The First Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
    }

    if (!preg_match($string_exp,$last_name)) {
        $error_message .= 'The Last Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
    }

    if (strlen($comments) < 2) {
        $error_message .= 'The Comments you entered do not appear to be valid.<br />';
    }

    if(strlen($error_message) > 0) {
        died($error_message);
    }

    $email_message = "Form details below.\n\n";

    function clean_string($string) {
      $bad = array("content-type","bcc:","to:","cc:","href");
      return str_replace($bad,"",$string);
    }

    $email_message .= "First Name: ".clean_string($first_name)."\n";
    $email_message .= "Last Name: ".clean_string($last_name)."\n";
    $email_message .= "Email: ".clean_string($email_from)."\n";
    $email_message .= "Telephone: ".clean_string($telephone)."\n";
    $email_message .= "Comments: ".clean_string($comments)."\n";

    // create email headers
    $headers = 'From: '.$email_from."\r\n" .
               'Reply-To: '.$email_from."\r\n" .
               'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();

    @mail($email_to, $email_subject, $email_message, $headers); 

?> 

<!-- include your own success html here -->

Your Property has been Posted please check your email address.

<?php

}

?>

Answer 1

Well you don't specify where you want to get this number from. Since you said generate I'll assume you're creating it on the spot. So maybe add onto the end of $email_subject something like $rand(100,1000)?

Maybe you should clarify what you're asking for?

Side note: Consider using filter_var($email_a, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) to check emails, not some preg_match. More info on that here.

Answer 2

to generate random number simply user rand() function as below

echo rand($fromRange,$toRange);

and you will get random number between the range you specified