As the implementation is complex and is spread over a number of files and classes, I shall be looking at it over the course of several posts. In this post I shall be concentrating on the action handler.

The action handler starts by retrieving the request object:

public function contactAction()
{
  $request = $this->getRequest();

This will be used to determine whether the user has submitted the contact form and what data was submitted.

Then the function creates the form object:

  $form = new Default_Form_Contact();

We shall look at the implementation of this class in a later post.

Then the function determines whether the user has posted the form:

  if ($request->isPost())
  {

If the user has posted the form, the function retrieves the data posted and validates it against the form:

    $post = $request->getPost();
 
    if ($form->isValid($post))
    {

If the data is valid, the function then creates and sends the e-mail.

The first step is to create a Zend_Layout object, then set the layout script and its location:

      try
      {
        $layout = new Zend_Layout();
        $layout->setLayoutPath(APPLICATION_PATH . "/layouts/scripts");
        $layout->setLayout('contact-email');

The Zend_Layout will now look for a file called contact-email.phtml in the application/layouts/scripts directory.

The next step is to create a filter and use it to eliminate any possible HTML injection, before passing the parameters to the layout script:

        $htmlEntities = new Zend_Filter_HtmlEntities();
        $layout->name = $htmlEntities->filter($post['name']);
        $layout->email = $htmlEntities->filter($post['email']);
        $layout->message = $htmlEntities->filter($post['message']);

Then the layout is rendered and stored in a variable:

        $bodyHtml = $layout->render();

The sending of the mail is handled by the Default_Model_Mail_Contact class, which will be examined in a later post. The function creates an object of that class and call its send method, passing the HTML generated above as the parameter:

        $mail = new Default_Model_Mail_Contact();
        $mail->send($bodyHtml);

Then a variable is passed to the view script to flag that the mail has been sent:

        $this->view->sent = true;
      }

Any exceptions thrown during the process of sending the mail are handled in the following catch block:

      catch (Exception $e)
      {
        $this->view->errorMessage = $e->getMessage();
      }
    }

If the form validation fails, the error is passed in a variable to the view script:

    else
    {
      $this->view->error = $form->getFirstFormError();
    }
  }

Finally, the form object is always passed to the view script, to allow it to be rendered if necessary.

  $this->view->form = $form;
}

The layout script for the e-mail is quite simple:

<div>
  <div><strong>Name:</strong> 
<?php echo $this->layout()->name; ?></div>
  <div>
    <strong>E-mail:</strong> 
    <a href="mailto:<?php echo $this->layout()->email; ?>">
<?php echo $this->layout()->email; ?></a>
  </div>
  <div><strong>Message:</strong> 
<?php echo $this->layout()->message; ?></div>
</div>

The fields submitted by the user are injected into the appropriate places in the e-mail.

In the next post, I shall look at the view script for the contact page.