Sending Email with PHP
- To send emails using PHP's built-in mail() function.
- To send email using PHPMailer, a PHP extension with more features than mail().
mail()
PHP has a built-in mail() function that makes it easy to send email.
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| To | The address to send the email to. |
| Subject | The email's subject. |
| Message | The body of the email. |
| Additional Headers | Optional. Additional headers (e.g, From, Reply-To) |
| Additional Parameters | Optional. Any additional parameters you may want to send to your mail server. |
Code Sample: Email/Demos/Mail.php
<html>
<head>
<title>Mail()</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
if (!array_key_exists('Submitted',$_POST))
{
?>
<form method="post" action="Mail.php">
<input type="hidden" name="Submitted" value="true"/>
Mail Server: <input type="text" name="Host" size="25"/><br/>
To: <input type="text" name="To" size="25"/><br/>
From: <input type="text" name="From" size="25"/><br/>
Subject: <input type="text" name="Subject" size="25"/><br/>
<textarea name="Message" cols="50" rows="10"></textarea><br/>
<input type="submit" value="Send Email"/>
</form>
<?php
}
else
{
ini_set('SMTP',$_POST['Host']);
$To = $_POST['To'];
$From = 'From: ' . $_POST['From'];
$Subject = $_POST['Subject'];
$Message = $_POST['Message'];
if(mail($To,$Subject,$Message,$From))
{
echo "Message Sent";
}
else
{
echo "Message Not Sent";
}
}
?>
</body>
</html>
For this example to work, you will need to have a mail server set up on your server.
The first time a visitor hits the page, he'll be presented with a form. When the user fills out and submits that form, the mail() function will attempt to send an email to the address the user entered.
Note that the mail server is set with the ini_set() function, which is used to temporarily change configuration settings. You can set the default mail server in the php.ini file with the SMTP setting.
Shortcomings of mail()
The mail() function has many limitations.
- No support for SMTP authentication.
- No support for HTML-formatted emails.
- No support for attachments.
Luckily, there are extensions that do provide these features.
PHPMailer
A very good email extension is PHPMailer, which is available for free at http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net. We will use PHPMailer in our examples and exercises. The following tables show some of the more common methods and properties of PHPMailer.
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| AddAddress() | Adds a "To" address. |
| AddAttachment() | Adds an attachment from a path on the filesystem. |
| AddBCC() | Adds a "bcc" address. |
| AddCC() | Adds a "cc" address. |
| AddReplyTo() | Adds a "Reply-to" address. |
| IsHTML() | Sets message type to HTML. |
| IsSMTP() | Sets Mailer to send message using SMTP. |
| Send() | Creates message and assigns Mailer. If the message is not sent successfully then it returns false. |
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| AltBody | Sets the text-only body of the message. |
| Body | Sets the Body of the message. This can be either an HTML or text body. |
| ErrorInfo | Holds the most recent mailer error message. |
| From | Sets the From email address for the message. |
| FromName | Sets the From name of the message. |
| Host | Sets the SMTP hosts. All hosts must be separated by semicolons. |
| Password | Sets SMTP password. |
| SMTPAuth | Sets SMTP authentication. Utilizes the Username and Password properties. |
| Subject | Sets the Subject of the message. |
| Username | Sets SMTP username. |
| WordWrap | Sets word wrapping on the body of the message to a given number of characters. |
Code Sample: Email/Demos/PHPMailer.php
<html>
<head>
<title>PHPMailer</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
if (!array_key_exists('Submitted',$_POST))
{
?>
<form method="post" action="PHPMailer.php">
<input type="hidden" name="Submitted" value="true"/><br/>
Mail Server: <input type="text" name="Host" size="25"/><br/>
If authentication is required:<br/>
Username: <input type="text" name="Username" size="25"/><br/>
Password: <input type="password" name="Password" size="10"/>
<hr/>
To: <input type="text" name="To" size="25"/><br/>
From Email: <input type="text" name="From" size="25"/><br/>
From Name: <input type="text" name="FromName" size="25"/><br/>
Subject: <input type="text" name="Subject" size="25"/><br/>
<textarea name="Message" cols="50" rows="10"></textarea><br/>
Using HTML: <input type="checkbox" name="HTML"/>
<input type="submit" value="Send Email"/>
</form>
<?php
}
else
{
require("class.phpmailer.php");
$To = $_POST['To'];
$From = $_POST['From'];
$FromName = $_POST['FromName'];
$Subject = $_POST['Subject'];
$Message = $_POST['Message'];
$Host = $_POST['Host'];
if (array_key_exists('HTML',$_POST))
{
$HTML = true;
$Mail->Username=$_POST['Username'];
$Mail->Password=$_POST['Password'];
}
else
{
$HTML = false;
}
$Mail = new PHPMailer();
$Mail->IsSMTP(); // send via SMTP
$Mail->Host = $Host; //SMTP server
if (array_key_exists('Username',$_POST))
{
$Mail->SMTPAuth=true;
}
else
{
$Mail->SMTPAuth=false;
}
$Mail->From = $From;
$Mail->FromName = $FromName;
$Mail->AddAddress($To);
$Mail->AddReplyTo($From);
$Mail->WordWrap = 50; // set word wrap
$Mail->IsHTML($HTML);
$Mail->Subject = $Subject;
$Mail->Body = $Message;
if($Mail->Send())
{
echo "Message Sent";
}
else
{
echo "Message Not Sent<br/>";
echo "Mailer Error: " . $Mail->ErrorInfo;
}
}
?>
</body>
</html>
As you can see, PHPMailer comes with a full set of intuitive methods and properties that make sending emails very easy.
Sending Email with PHP Conclusion
In this lesson of the PHP tutorial, you have learned to send email messages with PHP's built-in mail() function and with PHPMailer.