PHP form giving internal error

Question

My PHP code always returns HTTP/1.1 500 internal server error. This is being accessed from some AJAX code, and is a serperate file. It is most likely something obvious, any help would be appreciated. PHP:

<?php  
if( isset($_POST) ){  

//form validation vars  
$formok = true;  
$errors = array();  

//submission data  
$ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];  
$date = date('d/m/Y');  
$time = date('H:i:s');  

//form data  
$fname = $_POST['fname'];  
$lname = $_POST['lname'];     
$aemail = $_POST['aemail'];  
$year = $_POST['year'];  
$position = $_POST['position'];  
$club = $_POST['club'];  

//validate email address is not empty  
if(empty($email)){  
    $formok = false;  
    $errors[] = "You have not entered an email address";  
//validate email address is valid  
}elseif(!filter_var($aemail, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)){  
    $formok = false;  
    $errors[] = "You have not entered a valid email address";  
}

//send email if all is ok  
if($formok){  
    $headers = "From: " $aemail . "\r\n";
    $headers = "Reply-To: " . $email_from . "\r\n"; 
    $headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";  

    $emailbody = "<p>You have received a new message from the enquiries form on your website.</p> 
                  <p><strong>First Name: </strong> {$fname} </p>
                  <p><strong>Last Name: </strong> {$fname} </p>                      
                  <p><strong>Email Address: </strong> {$email} </p> 
                  <p><strong>School Year: </strong> {$year} </p> 
                  <p><strong>Club: </strong> {$club} </p> 
                  <p><strong>Position: </strong> {$position} </p> 
                  <p>This message was sent from the IP Address: {$ipaddress} on {$date} at {$time}</p>";

    ini_set("sendmail_from", $email_from); 

    $sent = mail("[email protected]","New Enquiry",$emailbody,$headers, "-f" . $email_from);  

}  

//what we need to return back to our form  
$returndata = array(  
    'posted_form_data' => array(  
        'fname' => $fname, 
        'lname' => $fname, 
        'aemail' => $aemail,  
        'year' => $year,  
        'position' => $position,  
        'club' => $club  
    ),  
    'form_ok' => $formok,  
    'errors' => $errors  
);  


//if this is not an ajax request  
if(empty($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']) && strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']) !== 'xmlhttprequest'){  
    //set session variables  
    session_start();  
    $_SESSION['cf_returndata'] = $returndata;  

    //redirect back to form  
    header('location: ' . $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'].' 500 Internal Server Error', true, 500);  
 }  
}
?>

Answer 1

There is probably a php error. Put this to the header of your php file for seeing the error:

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

Thanks to @bwoebi I can add that exactly in the case of parse errors to display the error text instead of 500 error you should put this to your .htaccess:

php_flag display_errors 1