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Send mail
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
bool mail ( string to, string subject, string message [, string additional_headers [, string additional_parameters]] )
Parameters
- to
Receiver, or receivers of the mail.
The formatting of this string must comply with » RFC 2822. Some examples are:
user@example.com user@example.com, anotheruser@example.com User <user@example.com> User <user@example.com>, Another User <anotheruser@example.com> - subject
Subject of the email to be sent.
Caution:This must not contain any newline characters, or the mail may not be sent properly.
- message
Message to be sent.
Each line should be separated with a LF (\n). Lines should not be larger than 70 characters.
Caution:(Windows only) When PHP is talking to a SMTP server directly, if a full stop is found on the start of a line, it is removed. To counter-act this, replace these occurrences with a double dot.
<?php
$text = str_replace("\n.", "\n..", $text);
?>- additional_headers (optional)
String to be inserted at the end of the email header.
This is typically used to add extra headers (From, Cc, and Bcc). Multiple extra headers should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n).
Note:When sending mail, the mail must contain a
Fromheader. This can be set with the additional_headers parameter, or a default can be set inphp.ini.Failing to do this will result in an error message similar to
Warning: mail(): "sendmail_from" not set in php.ini or custom "From:" header missing. TheFromheader sets alsoReturn-Pathunder Windows.Note:If messages are not received, try using a LF (\n) only. Some poor quality Unix mail transfer agents replace LF by CRLF automatically (which leads to doubling CR if CRLF is used). This should be a last resort, as it does not comply with » RFC 2822.
- additional_parameters (optional)
The additional_parameters parameter can be used to pass an additional parameter to the program configured to use when sending mail using the
sendmail_pathconfiguration setting. For example, this can be used to set the envelope sender address when using sendmail with the-fsendmail option.The user that the webserver runs as should be added as a trusted user to the sendmail configuration to prevent a 'X-Warning' header from being added to the message when the envelope sender (-f) is set using this method. For sendmail users, this file is
/etc/mail/trusted-users.
Return Values
Returns TRUE if the mail was successfully accepted for delivery, FALSE otherwise.
It is important to note that just because the mail was accepted for delivery, it does NOT mean the mail will actually reach the intended destination.
ChangeLog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 4.3.0 (Windows only) | All custom headers (like From, Cc, Bcc and Date) are supported, and are not case-sensitive. (As custom headers are not interpreted by the MTA in the first place, but are parsed by PHP, PHP < 4.3 only supported the Cc header element and was case-sensitive). |
| 4.2.3 |
The additional_parameters parameter is disabled in
safe_mode and the
mail() function will expose a warning message
and return FALSE when used.
|
| 4.0.5 | The additional_parameters parameter was added. |
Examples
Example 1129. Sending mail.
Using mail() to send a simple email:
<?php
// The message
$message = "Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3";
// In case any of our lines are larger than 70 characters, we should use wordwrap()
$message = wordwrap($message, 70);
// Send
mail('caffinated@example.com', 'My Subject', $message);
?>
Example 1130. Sending mail with extra headers.
The addition of basic headers, telling the MUA the From and Reply-To addresses:
<?php
$to = 'nobody@example.com';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
'Reply-To: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>
Example 1131. Sending mail with an additional command line parameter.
The additional_parameters parameter
can be used to pass an additional parameter to the program configured
to use when sending mail using the sendmail_path.
<?php
mail('nobody@example.com', 'the subject', 'the message', null,
'-fwebmaster@example.com');
?>
Example 1132. Sending HTML email
It is also possible to send HTML email with mail().
<?php
// multiple recipients
$to = 'aidan@example.com' . ', '; // note the comma
$to .= 'wez@example.com';
// subject
$subject = 'Birthday Reminders for August';
// message
$message = '
<html>
<head>
<title>Birthday Reminders for August</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Here are the birthdays upcoming in August!</p>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Person</th><th>Day</th><th>Month</th><th>Year</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Joe</td><td>3rd</td><td>August</td><td>1970</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sally</td><td>17th</td><td>August</td><td>1973</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
';
// To send HTML mail, the Content-type header must be set
$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n";
// Additional headers
$headers .= 'To: Mary <mary@example.com>, Kelly <kelly@example.com>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: Birthday Reminder <birthday@example.com>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Cc: birthdayarchive@example.com' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Bcc: birthdaycheck@example.com' . "\r\n";
// Mail it
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>If intending to send HTML or otherwise Complex mails, it is recommended to use the PEAR package » PEAR::Mail_Mime.
Notes
The Windows implementation of mail() differs in many
ways from the Unix implementation. First, it doesn't use a local binary
for composing messages but only operates on direct sockets which means a
MTA is needed listening on a network socket (which
can either on the localhost or a remote machine).
Second, the custom headers like
From:,
Cc:,
Bcc: and
Date: are
not interpreted by the
MTA in the first place, but are parsed by PHP.
As such, the to parameter should not be an address in the form of "Something <someone@example.com>". The mail command may not parse this properly while talking with the MTA.
Email with attachments and special types of content (e.g. HTML) can be sent using this function. This is accomplished via MIME-encoding - for more information, see this » Zend article or the » PEAR Mime Classes.
It is worth noting that the mail() function is not suitable for larger volumes of email in a loop. This function opens and closes an SMTP socket for each email, which is not very efficient.
For the sending of large amounts of email, see the » PEAR::Mail, and » PEAR::Mail_Queue packages.
The following RFCs may be useful: » RFC 1896, » RFC 2045, » RFC 2046, » RFC 2047, » RFC 2048, » RFC 2049, and » RFC 2822.