PHP Send Emails

In this tutorial you will learn how to send simple text or HTML emails directly from the script using the PHP mail() function.

The PHP mail() Function

Sending email messages are very common for a web application, for example, sending welcome email when a user create an account on your website, sending newsletters to your registered users, or getting user feedback or comment through website’s contact form, and so on.

You can use the PHP built-in mail() function for creating and sending email messages to one or more recipients dynamically from your PHP application either in a plain-text form or formatted HTML. The basic syntax of this function can be given with:

The following table summarizes the parameters of this function.

Parameter	Description
Required — The following parameters are required
to	The recipient’s email address.
subject	Subject of the email to be sent. This parameter i.e. the subject line cannot contain any newline character ( \n ).
message	Defines the message to be sent. Each line should be separated with a line feed-LF ( \n ). Lines should not exceed 70 characters.
Optional — The following parameters are optional
headers	This is typically used to add extra headers such as «From», «Cc», «Bcc». The additional headers should be separated with a carriage return plus a line feed-CRLF ( \r\n ).
parameters	Used to pass additional parameters.

Sending Plain Text Emails

The simplest way to send an email with PHP is to send a text email. In the example below we first declare the variables — recipient’s email address, subject line and message body — then we pass these variables to the mail() function to send the email.

Example

Sending HTML Formatted Emails

When you send a text message using PHP, all the content will be treated as simple text. We’re going to improve that output, and make the email into a HTML-formatted email.

To send an HTML email, the process will be the same. However, this time we need to provide additional headers as well as an HTML formatted message.

Example

'; $message .= '
Hi Jane!
'; $message .= '
Will you marry me?
'; $message .= ''; // Sending email if(mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers)) < echo 'Your mail has been sent successfully.'; >else < echo 'Unable to send email. Please try again.'; >?>

Note: However, the PHP mail() function is a part of the PHP core but you need to set up a mail server on your machine to make it really work.

In the next two chapters (PHP Form Handling and PHP Form Validation) you will learn how to implement an interactive contact form on your website to receive the user’s comment and feedback through emails using this PHP send mail feature.

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mail

Each line should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n). Lines should not be larger than 70 characters.

(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.

String or array 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). If outside data are used to compose this header, the data should be sanitized so that no unwanted headers could be injected.

If an array is passed, its keys are the header names and its values are the respective header values.

Note:

Before PHP 5.4.42 and 5.5.27, repectively, additional_headers did not have mail header injection protection. Therefore, users must make sure specified headers are safe and contains headers only. i.e. Never start mail body by putting multiple newlines.

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 . The From header sets also Return-Path when sending directly via SMTP (Windows only).

Note:

If messages are not received, try using a LF (\n) only. Some Unix mail transfer agents (most notably » qmail) 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.

The additional_params parameter can be used to pass additional flags as command line options to the program configured to be used when sending mail, as defined by 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.

This parameter is escaped by escapeshellcmd() internally to prevent command execution. escapeshellcmd() prevents command execution, but allows to add additional parameters. For security reasons, it is recommended for the user to sanitize this parameter to avoid adding unwanted parameters to the shell command.

Since escapeshellcmd() is applied automatically, some characters that are allowed as email addresses by internet RFCs cannot be used. mail() can not allow such characters, so in programs where the use of such characters is required, alternative means of sending emails (such as using a framework or a library) is recommended.

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
7.2.0	The additional_headers parameter now also accepts an array .

Examples

Example #1 Sending mail.

Using mail() to send a simple email:

// The message
$message = «Line 1\r\nLine 2\r\nLine 3» ;

// In case any of our lines are larger than 70 characters, we should use wordwrap()
$message = wordwrap ( $message , 70 , «\r\n» );

// Send
mail ( ‘caffeinated@example.com’ , ‘My Subject’ , $message );
?>

Example #2 Sending mail with extra headers.

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

$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 #3 Sending mail with extra headers as array

This example sends the same mail as the example immediately above, but passes the additional headers as array (available as of PHP 7.2.0).

$to = ‘nobody@example.com’ ;
$subject = ‘the subject’ ;
$message = ‘hello’ ;
$headers = array(
‘From’ => ‘webmaster@example.com’ ,
‘Reply-To’ => ‘webmaster@example.com’ ,
‘X-Mailer’ => ‘PHP/’ . phpversion ()
);

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

Example #4 Sending mail with an additional command line parameter.

The additional_params parameter can be used to pass an additional parameter to the program configured to use when sending mail using the sendmail_path .

Example #5 Sending HTML email

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

// Multiple recipients
$to = ‘johny@example.com, sally@example.com’ ; // note the comma

// Subject
$subject = ‘Birthday Reminders for August’ ;

// Message
$message = ‘

Here are the birthdays upcoming in August!

Person	Day	Month	Year
Johny	10th	August	1970
Sally	17th	August	1973

‘ ;

// To send HTML mail, the Content-type header must be set
$headers [] = ‘MIME-Version: 1.0’ ;
$headers [] = ‘Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1’ ;

// Additional headers
$headers [] = ‘To: Mary , Kelly ‘ ;
$headers [] = ‘From: Birthday Reminder ‘ ;
$headers [] = ‘Cc: birthdayarchive@example.com’ ;
$headers [] = ‘Bcc: birthdaycheck@example.com’ ;

// Mail it
mail ( $to , $subject , $message , implode ( «\r\n» , $headers ));
?>

Note:

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

Notes

Note:

The SMTP implementation (Windows only) of mail() differs in many ways from the sendmail 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 «. The mail command may not parse this properly while talking with the MTA.

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.

See Also

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Sending Nice HTML Email with PHP

This is going to be a continuation of the Website Change Request Form demo we’ve been using around here for a while. If you need to catch up, first I talked about it, then I built it, then I screencasted it, then I secured it. Throughout all of this, the end result has been a boring text-only email that gets sent to a single email address. We’re going to improve that output, and make the email into a nicer looking HTML-formatted email.

It’s Not Much Different Than Text Email

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

The last parameter, the headers, are optional for the function but required for sending HTML email, as this is where we are able to pass along the Content-Type declaration telling email clients to parse the email as HTML. In fact, the headers area gives us the opportunity to do lots of important email functions. This is where we can set the From: and Reply To: settings if need be, as well as CC and BCC other recipients (Hey, a checkbox for CC’ing yourself would be a cool feature to add!). Here is the code used for the new and improved HTML-Sendin’ Website Change Request Form:

$to = '[email protected]'; $subject = 'Website Change Request'; $headers = "From: " . strip_tags($_POST['req-email']) . "\r\n"; $headers .= "Reply-To: ". strip_tags($_POST['req-email']) . "\r\n"; $headers . /cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" data-cfemail="f3808680929db3968b929e839f96dd909c9e">[email protected]\r\n"; $headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n"; $headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\r\n";

The message parameter (a big string we pass to the mail function with the body of our email), can now have HTML tags in it. For example:

$message = ''; $message .= '
Hello, World!
'; $message .= '';

$message = ''; $message .= ''; $message .= ''; $message .= ""; $message .= ""; $message .= ""; $message .= ""; $message .= ""; $addURLS = $_POST['addURLS']; if (($addURLS) != '') < $message .= ""; > $curText = htmlentities($_POST['curText']); if (($curText) != '') < $message .= ""; > $message .= ""; $message .= "
Name: 
" . strip_tags($_POST['req-name']) . "
Email: 
" . strip_tags($_POST['req-email']) . "
Type of Change: 
" . strip_tags($_POST['typeOfChange']) . "
Urgency: 
" . strip_tags($_POST['urgency']) . "
URL To Change (main): 
" . $_POST['URL-main'] . "
URL To Change (additional): 
" . strip_tags($addURLS) . "
CURRENT Content: 
" . $curText . "
NEW Content: 
" . htmlentities($_POST['newText']) . "
"; $message .= "";

I think that looks A LOT nicer. And since this email is (theoretically) coming directly to you, isn’t it nice to know that it will be formatted to be easy on the eyes?

Some people just absolutely hate HTML email. For one, it can be a security risk as it’s possible to run JavaScript in them in some email clients which can be problematic. HTML emails also have a habit of being more easily caught in Spam filters. I think it’s less of a concern here as this email is essentially being created BY you FOR you.

I updated the demo and download to use the new HTML email format. View Demo Download Files There is likely to be another one or two demos on this form yet to come. I would at least like to do one on writing the data to a database before sending the email. Email can be such a fragile thing, that saving the data to a DB first is surely a smart move.

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