Notice: Undefined variable: email_content [closed]

Question

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, visit the help center.

Closed 8 years ago.

I have a contact form that is working at the moment,i only get two notices:

Notice: Undefined variable: email_content Notice: Undefined variable: header

This is the code

// check if an error was found - if there was, send the user back to the form 
if (isset($error)) { 
$_POST['e'] = $error; 
} else {

// write the email content <-- HERE IS WHERE THE ERROR OCCURS
$email_content .= "Naam:" . htmlspecialchars($name, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n"; 
$email_content .= "Tel:" . htmlspecialchars($tel, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n"; 
$email_content .= "E-mail:" . htmlspecialchars($email_address, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n"; 
$email_content .= "Onderwerp:" . htmlspecialchars($onderwerp, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n"; 
$email_content .= "Bericht:" . htmlspecialchars($message, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n"; 


/*
$email_content .= "Naam:$name\n\n"; 
$email_content .= "Tel:$tel\n\n"; 
$email_content .= "E-mail:$email_address\n\n"; 
$email_content .= "Onderwerp:$onderwerp\n\n"; 
$email_content .= "Bericht:$message\n\n";
*/ 
$header .= 'From: www.UTI.nl';   <-- AND HERE IS ALSO WHERE THE ERROR OCCURS
// send the email 
mail ("robin2609@gmail.com", "Nieuw bericht van de UTI website", $email_content, $header );   <-- this is 

// send the user back to the form 
$_POST['s'] = 'Bedankt voor uw bericht.';

What am i missing? I hope you guys can help me.

Kind regards,

Robin

Answer 1

Because you are trying to append to an undeclared string in $email_content & $header.

On your first lines of each variable change the .= to =

Answer 2

You concatenate a string to an undefined variable:

$email_content .= "....";

Define it first by assigning something to it:

$email_content = "";
$email_content .= "....";

Answer 3

You're using .= (append string operand) on a string you didn't define yet. PHP sees this:

$string .= $string2

To mean this:

$string = $string . $string2

When it tries to parse that, $string doesn't exist so can't be concatenated with $string2 or assigned to $string.

You should replace these lines:

$email_content .= "Naam:" . htmlspecialchars($name, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n";
...
$header .= 'From: www.UTI.nl';   <-- AND HERE IS ALSO WHERE THE ERROR OCCURS

With the following:

$email_content = "Naam:" . htmlspecialchars($name, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n";
...
$header = 'From: www.UTI.nl';

This should be fine.

Answer 4

You append a String to a undefined Variable. Write

$header = "";
$email_content = "";

before you append sth. You would get an error in other languages.

Answer 5

You are using this in your first line

$email_content .= "Naam:" . htmlspecialchars($name, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n"; 

Which is interpreted as

$email_content = $email_content . "Naam:" . htmlspecialchars($name, ENT_QUOTES) . "\n\n";

SO it says undefined variable.

Remove '.' from the first lines of email_content and header variable

Might help!!

Answer 6

You should initialize this variables. For example, in first lines.

$header = '';
$email_content = '';