Checking for the $_POST array

I'm still relatively new to PHP, meaning I can hack around inside other people's scripts to adjust them to my needs but am not quite up to designing complex applications of my own. This morning, I was goofing around with the mail() function and spent about five minutes writing up a little script. It's supposed to be a single-page deal; a form that submits to itself and takes different actions according to whether or not the form has been submitted.

The problem I'm having is that the form is generating errors when it's first loaded in the browser. The reason for this is that I'm assigning the values in the $_POST array to new variables, and if the form hasn't been submitted yet, the array is empty. So I was wondering, how do you check whether or not a form has been submitted, in order to eliminate those types of errors?

In case an example would be helpful, here's the script in question this morning. I only spent a few minutes on it and my PHP skills are less than shining, so I'm sure there are several inefficient and inelegant aspects to it. Notwithstanding, here it is:

<?php
error_reporting (E_ALL);
$to = $_POST['to'];
$from = $_POST['from'];
$subject = $_POST['subject'];
$message = $_POST['message'];
$headers = "From: $from \r\n";
$headers .= "Bcc: $from";
if ($_POST['send'])
{
$status = 'E-mail Sent';
$sent = 'true';
}
else
{
$status = 'E-mail Form';
$sent = 'false';
}
if ($sent = 'true')
{
mail ($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
}
else
{
// Do nothing
}
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>E-mail Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1><?php echo $status;?></h1>
<form action="/path/to/this-script.php" method="post">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td>To:</td>
<td><input type="text" name="to"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>From:</td>
<td><input type="text" name="from"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Subject:</td>
<td><input type="text" name="subject"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Message:</td>
<td><textarea cols="60" rows="20" name="message"></textarea></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;"><input type="submit" name="send" value="Send Message"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Thanks for any ideas,

Matthew

Yes, I realize this would be a severe spamming risk if I actually made the script web-accessible, but at the moment I'm just using it to hone my own skills.

<?php
error_reporting (E_ALL);
if (empty($_POST))
{
$status = '<h1>E-mail Form</h1>';
}
else
{
$to = $_POST['to'];
$from = $_POST['from'];
$subject = $_POST['subject'];
$message = $_POST['message'];
$headers = "From: $from \r\n";
$headers .= "Bcc: $from";
mail ($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
$status = '<h1>E-mail Sent Successfully!</h1>';
}
?>

Checking for the $_POST array

Single-page form script generating errors until form has been submitted

MatthewHSE

dreamcatcher

MatthewHSE

Timotheos

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