Issue
Suppose you want a box on your website that says "Give us your email address and we'll send you news" or somesuch. What's a simple/elegant way to collect those email addresses (assuming a standard LAMP stack)? In particular, I'd like recommendations on
- Javascript to handle the UI (complain if invalid email address, say thanks when they hit enter, etc).
- CSS to make it look decent.
- PHP to actually collect the email addresses and store them (either flat file or database is fine).
Or if there's a fancy Rails or AJAX way to do this, I'm very open to that, too.
(All I know currently is how to do this the old-school CGI way, with a plain html web form with a submit button and a server-side script that takes the form contents, pulls out the email address, and spits out html (potentially a redirect back to the original page).)
If I'm naive in thinking I can grab something off the shelf for this and should be starting with something like an AJAX tutorial, let me know that as well. I've seen this JQuery/AJAX tutorial recommended. Is that or something like it the quickest way to get a simple sign-up form up and running?
Solution
I just implemented something like this on one of my websites strangely enough. I didn't store the email addresses though, I emailed them to myself. I'll comment that bit out so you can write your flat-file or database storage bits.
Here's my implementation, using jQuery. Steal away :)
In the HTML:
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
$('#btnSubmit').click(function(){
$('#btnSubmit').disabled = true;
var val = $('#emailAddress')[0].value;
$('#emailResponse').html('<img src="ajax-loader.gif" border="0" />').css('backgroundColor', 'ffffd0');
$.getJSON('notify.php',{email: val}, function(data){
if (!data.result) {
$('#emailResponse').html(data.message).css('backgroundColor','ff9999').effect('highlight', {color: '#ffff99'}, 1000);
} else {
$('#emailResponse').html(data.message).css('backgroundColor','99ff99').effect('highlight', {color: '#ffff99'}, 1000);
}
});
$('#btnSubmit').disabled = false;
return false;
});
$('#emailAddress').keyup(function(e) {
if(e.keyCode == 13) {
$('#btnSubmit').click();
}
return false;
});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div style="margin:0 auto;background:#ffffd0;width:500px;padding:10px;text-align:center; font-family:Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; border:1px solid black;">
If you would like to be notified when we launch, please leave your email address here.<br /><br />
<input type="text" id="emailAddress" size="40" style="border:1px solid gray;padding:5px;"/>
<input type="button" id="btnSubmit" value="Submit" style="padding:5px;" />
<div style="padding:10px;margin:10px;" id="emailResponse"></div>
</div>
</body>
In the notify.php file:
<?php
$q = html_entity_decode($_GET["email"]);
$response = array();
if (!filter_var($q, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL))
{
$response['result'] = 0;
$response['message'] = 'Invalid email given - try again';
}
else
{
// write to file or database
$response['result'] = 1;
$response['message'] = "Thanks, your details have been added, we'll notify you when we launch!";
}
}
echo json_encode($response);
?>
Edit: I know it's not pretty - inline styles, <br/> tags, etc.
Answered By - Damovisa
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