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mail

(PHP 3, PHP 4, PHP 5)

mail -- Send mail

Description

bool mail ( string to, string subject, string message [, string additional_headers [, string additional_parameters]] )

Sends an email.

Parameters

to

Receiver, or receivers of the mail.

The formatting of this string must comply with RFC 2822. Some examples are:

[email protected]
[email protected], [email protected]
User <[email protected]>
User <[email protected]>, Another User <[email protected]>

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 From header. This can be set with the additional_headers parameter, or a default can be set in php.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.

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_path configuration setting. For example, this can be used to set the envelope sender address when using sendmail with the -f sendmail 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

VersionDescription
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 1. 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('[email protected]', 'My Subject', $message);
?>

Example 2. Sending mail with extra headers.

The addition of basic headers, telling the MUA the From and Reply-To addresses:

<?php
$to      = '[email protected]';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: [email protected]' . "\r\n" .
    'Reply-To: [email protected]' . "\r\n" .
    'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();

mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

Example 3. 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('[email protected]', 'the subject', 'the message', null,
   '[email protected]');
?>

Example 4. Sending HTML email

It is also possible to send HTML email with mail().

<?php
// multiple recipients
$to  = '[email protected]' . ', '; // note the comma
$to .= '[email protected]';

// 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=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";

// Additional headers
$headers .= 'To: Mary <[email protected]>, Kelly <[email protected]>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: Birthday Reminder <[email protected]>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Cc: [email protected]' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Bcc: [email protected]' . "\r\n";

// Mail it
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

Note: If intending to send HTML or otherwise Complex mails, it is recommended to use the PEAR package PEAR::Mail.

Notes

Note: 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 <[email protected]>". The mail command may not parse this properly while talking with the MTA.

Note: 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.

Note: 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.

Note: The following RFCs may be useful: RFC 1896, RFC 2045, RFC 2046, RFC 2047, RFC 2048, RFC 2049, and RFC 2822.

See Also

imap_mail()
PEAR::Mail
PEAR::Mail_Mime

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