Email textarea HTML code through PHP to display as html

Question

Currently I have a fully working email system and I wanted to implement summernote which I have. However when I submit the form it seems to send as html code in text so it shows all the <> and no special formatting. So I thought. Is it sending to the script correctly so I echoed it out and it shows the code without the formatting.

Send:

<?php require '../settings.php';
/* Check all form inputs using check_input function */
$name= check_input($_POST['name'], "Enter your name");
$email= check_input($_POST['email']);
$message= $_POST['message'];
$subject= check_input($_POST['subject']);
/* From who and Reply to Who. */
$headers = 'From: '.$name.'\r\n';
$headers .= 'Reply-To: '.$administrationemail.'\r\n';
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\r\n";
/* Send the message using mail() function */
mail($email, $subject, $message, $headers);
/* Redirect visitor to the thank you page */
header('Location: /mail/');
exit();
}
?>

Form:

<form action="send.php" method="post">
<b>Your Name:</b><input class="form-control" type="text" name="name">
<b>Subject:</b> <input class="form-control" type="text" name="subject">
<b>Recipient E-mail:</b> <input class="form-control" type="text" name="email">
<b>Your Message:</b>
<textarea class="summernote" id="message" name="message"></textarea>
<input name="submit" type="submit" class="btn btn-theme" value="Send it!">
</form>

Any help figuring out this issue would be great. Thanks in advance.

What I am wanting to show in email:

Hello John Smith,

I have recieved your invoice and will pay shortly.

From Your Friend: Sir Smith John.

What I am getting shown:

<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hello John Smith,</span></p>
<p>I have recieved your invoice and will pay shortly.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">From Your Friend:</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <span style="font-style: italic;">Sir Smith John.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br></span></p>

Function:

function check_input($data, $problem='')
{
$data = trim($data);
$data = stripslashes($data);
$data = preg_replace($wordlist, '****', $data);
if ($problem && strlen($data) == 0)
{
    show_error($problem);
}
return $data;
}

Answer 1

Use PHPMailer if you want flexibility. Its so good. Check out their website:

http://phpmailer.worxware.com/

Answer 2

You may need to adjust your headers, for arguments sake we'll just use the same method that is in the PHP docs.

$headers  = 'From: ' . $name . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Reply-To: ' . $administrationemail . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";

Your \\r\\n must be inside double quotes as single quotes are for literal strings.

Answer 3

Your script work as intended, if you want to send your email text with special formatting you have to replace HTML tags with escape characters (ex. <br /> to /n ). You can do it with str_replace :

$htmlTags = array('<br />', '<br/>');
$escapeCharacter = '/n';
$final_message = str_replace($htmlTags, $escapeCharacter, $message);