Last updated: Tue, 30 Jun 2009

mail

(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:

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

Subject must satisfy » RFC 2047.

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. The From header sets also Return-Path under 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 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.

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 #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('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:


<?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 #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('nobody@example.com', 'the subject', 'the message', null,
   '-fwebmaster@example.com');
?>

Example #4 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=iso-8859-1' . "\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);
?>

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

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 <someone@example.com>". 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.


To define a mail priority you have to put this lines in the headers:





<?php


        $headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" ;


        $headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\n";


        $headers .= "X-Priority: 1 (Higuest)\n";


        $headers .= "X-MSMail-Priority: High\n";


        $headers .= "Importance: High\n";





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


?>





Here i've added many headers information including the Priority...

aldertb at XS4ALL dot nl
23-Mar-2009 09:30


I experienced problems with removed euro signs and some other accented letters. The text came from a DB but contained the euro sign etcetera inside the mail function, just as when you would define it as a string. (Did die($newsletter['message']). It was lost in the mail I received though! When I defined the message as a string inside the sending function (overriding text from DB), including euro sign as a single character, I DID receive the email including euro sign!



This was experienced on 2 different email accounts. With one I received no text after the euro sign.



But only when text came from mySQL DB from a longtext Latin1-field...



I installed the pear mail class and this solved the strange problem and could just send text from the DB...

andrei_a at btconnect dot com
18-Mar-2009 02:57


On some shared hosts like 1and1.co.uk, when using mail() function with '-f' flag, email may be quietly 'dropped' and not sent at all without any error message returned if '-f' option is used without email address valid on this host.

For example, if used as '-ftest@test.com' the email will be dropped on 1and1 provider. But if you have a 'real' mailbox on the server, for example 'black-hole@mydomain.com', and you use '-fblack-hole@mydomain.com' then the email will be sent. At the same time envelope's 'Return-Path' will be set properly to 'black-hole@mydomain.com' instead of 'test@shared.host.name'.

alex_ramos at sourceforge dot net
27-Feb-2009 03:37


Beware if you're trying to use "-f" or "-r" with the 5th parameter of the PHP mail() function, and you're relying on a plain vanilla install of sendmail on Linux, it won't work. You'll have to either change the sendmail config and add your script's userid to "trusted-users" (easier said than done... good luck with that!), or, remove sendmail and install postfix (much easier).

thelegs at gmail dot com
25-Feb-2009 03:06


As some SMTP servers (for example Argosoft Mail Server for Windows) may lead into troubles when sending a mail to "Full Name <user@domain.tld>" instead of simply "user@domain.tld", the following may be a solution:



<?php

$Result = trim(preg_replace("/([\w\s]+)<([\S@._-]*)>/", " $2", $Input));

?>



I'm not a PCRE guru, but this seems to work pretty good with any number of e-mail addresses, even when the $Input contains "mixed" address definitions (ie. some with Full Name and some without).



Examples:



Input: "User 1 <user1@foo.tld>, User 2 <user2@foo.tld>, user3@foo.tld"

Result: "user1@foo.tld, user2@foo.tld, user3@foo.tld";



Input: "user1@foo.tld, user2@foo.tld"

Result: "user1@foo.tld, user2@foo.tld"



The use of trim is optional, just to keep a nice space after the comma separator. If you don't mind about showing nice recipient lists to the MTA, I think this would work as well:



<?php

$Result = preg_replace("/([\w\s]+)<([\S@._-]*)>/", "$2", $Input);

?>



Anyway I hope that someone could improve these expressions. :)

Erich at gasboysnospam dot net
19-Feb-2009 03:43


if your mail is failing (returns false) be aware that many servers are configured to kill mail going out with a bcc or cc header.



The ideal workaround is to use the smtp functions which servers allow because of its better audit trail. Alternatively call the mail function several times.



I've just spent about four hours trying to work out what I was doing wrong!!

deepakkallungal at gmail dot com
23-Jan-2009 07:34


For solving japanese subject in php mail.



we had a problem was when we give shift-jis encoded test for subject in mail, the mail received  displayed as "BQ Tech\ Ý t H [" in subject where the content in the mail was showing correctly.

we solved it by using this code.



$subject =iconv( "Shift_JIS","EUC-JP", "BQ Tech申込みフォーム");



we can convert like this for japanese encoding not working correctly for japanese text.

orjtor
19-Jan-2009 08:17


This is my solution of problems with Windows Mail on Vista. I got some of the headers in the mail body as plain text. When I removed '\r' and left just '\n' at the end of the two last lines of header it worked. This error didn't show up in my yahoo mail.

<?php

    $body = "<html>\n";

    $body .= "<body style=\"font-family:Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#666666;\">\n";

    $body = $message;

    $body .= "</body>\n";

    $body .= "</html>\n";

    

    $headers  = "From: My site<noreply@my_site.com>\r\n";

    $headers .= "Reply-To: info@my_site.com\r\n";

    $headers .= "Return-Path: info@my_site.com\r\n";

    $headers .= "X-Mailer: Drupal\n";

    $headers .= 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\n";

    $headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";

    

    return mail($recipient, $subject, $message, $headers);

?>

tyagi dot akhil at gmail dot com
04-Jan-2009 02:29


To send XML content in mail use this



Content-Type: text/xml



instead of Content-Type: text/html

Tim Johannessen
15-Dec-2008 02:59


I tried the example provided by [hn at nesland dot net] but it didn't quite work, as the error:


Fatal error: Cannot redeclare mail()


was encountered.





Also, the runkit_function_rename() caused apache to exit with Segmentation fault (11)





This works like a charm:





<?PHP


@dl("runkit.so");


@runkit_function_copy("mail", "__org_mail");


@runkit_function_remove("mail");


@runkit_function_copy("__new_mail", "mail");


@runkit_function_remove("__new_mail");





function __new_mail($to, $subject, $message, $additional_headers = null, $additional_parameters = null) {


   /* do your own mail function checks here */


   return __org_mail($to, $subject, $message, $additional_headers, $additional_parameters);


}


?>





Atleast it worked for me, stripping newlines from $to, $subject, removing unwanted headers from $additional_headers and adding new headers to $additional_headers for debugging - this way I'll be able to track the origin of the mail using the headers.





You'll need enable_dl = On in your php.ini and also runkit.internal_override = "1"





I wanted to remove the execution of __org_mail(), so I tried to add this to disable_functions in php.ini but that didn't seem to work, so be aware that the original function can still be executed, and found by using get_defined_functions().

php at ontheroad dot net dot nz
04-Nov-2008 05:00


Another possible cause for the "501 5.5.4 Invalid Address" type errors when sending mail from Windows is specifying BCC or CC parameters with no value.

molotster on google mail com
13-Oct-2008 08:03


Note, that single line should not contain more than 78 character, but is not allowed to contain more than 998 characters.



The possible consequences are:

Over 78 - clients are allowed to display the message in a "harder to read" way.

Over 998 - clients and servers are allowed to drop the message or cause any buffer-limit error.



See:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822 part 2.1.1.

duminda
17-Sep-2008 08:44


<?PHP

$title=$_POST['title'];

$name=$_POST['name'];

$email=$_POST['email'];

$telephone=$_POST['telephone'];

$fax=$_POST['fax'];

$address=$_POST['address'];

$country=$_POST['country'];

$comment=$_POST['comment'];



# -=-=-=- MIME BOUNDARY

$mime_boundary = "----MSA Shipping----".md5(time());

# -=-=-=- MAIL HEADERS

$to = "dlwijerathna@gmail.com";

//$to = "duminda@dumidesign.com";

//$to = "info@msashipping.com";

$subject = "Information Request from MSA Shipping - Contact Form";

$headers = "From: MSA SHIPPING <webmaster@msashipping.com>\n";

$headers .= "Reply-To: MSA Shipping <webmaster@msashipping.com>\n";

$headers .= "BCC: dumidesign@gmail.com";

$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";

$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"$mime_boundary\"\n";



$message .= "--$mime_boundary\n";

$message .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8\n";

$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n\n";



$message .= "<html>\n";

$message .= "<body style=\"font-family:Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#666666;\">\n";



$message .= "<table width=\"800\" height=\"159\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" >";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td height=\"66\" colspan=\"4\" bgcolor=\"#CCCCCC\"></td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td width=\"1%\"></td>";

$message .="<td colspan=\"3\">&nbsp;</td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td>&nbsp;</td>";

$message .="<td width=\"100\"><b>Title</b></td>";

$message .="<td align=\"left\" >:</td>";

$message .="<td>$title</td>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td>&nbsp;</td>";

$message .="<td><b>Name</b></td>";

$message .="<td>:</td>";

$message .="<td>$name</td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td>&nbsp;</td>";

$message .="<td><b>E-mail</b></td>";

$message .="<td>:</td>";

$message .="<td>$email</td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td>&nbsp;</td>";

$message .="<td><b>Telephone</b></td>";

$message .="<td>:</td>";

$message .="<td>$telephone</td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td>&nbsp;</td>";

$message .="<td><b>Fax</b></td>";

$message .="<td>:</td>";

$message .="<td>$fax</td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td>&nbsp;</td>";

$message .="<td><b>Country</b></td>";

$message .="<td>:</td>";

$message .="<td>$country</td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td>&nbsp;</td>";

$message .="<td><b>Comments</b></td>";

$message .="<td>:</td>";

$message .="<td>$comment</td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="<tr>";

$message .="<td height=\"21\" colspan=\"4\" bgcolor=\"#CCCCCC\"></td>";

$message .="</tr>";

$message .="</table>";

$message .= "</body>\n";

$message .= "</html>\n";

# -=-=-=- FINAL BOUNDARY

$message .= "--$mime_boundary--\n\n";

# -=-=-=- SEND MAIL

$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );

//echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed";

if($mail_sent)

{

header('Location:contactus.php?msg=yes');

}

else

{

header('Location:contactus.php?msg=no');

}

?>

webmaster at plumage dot nl
01-Sep-2008 09:53


The work-around for a large quantity of recipients is putting the adresses in the header-section as Bcc adresses.


In this way the mail()-function opens and closes the SMTP connection only once:





<?php


$count_recip= count($recip);//where $recip represents an array of mail-adresses, from MySql-query or otherwise


$count='0';


$headers.="Bcc: ";


while($count < $count_recip){


$headers.=$recip[$count].", ";


$count ++;


}


$headers.="admin@mailinglist.com\r\n";


?>

bob
15-Jul-2008 08:51


If the Cc or Bcc lines appear in the message body, make sure you're separating header lines with a new line (\n) rather than a carriage return-new line (\r\n). That should come at the very end of the headers.

akam
28-May-2008 01:55


There differenece in body, headers of email (with attachment, without attachment), see this complete example below:

work great for me (LINUX , WIN) and (Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, ...)

<?php

$to      = $_POST['to']; 

$email   = $_POST['email']; 

$name    = $_POST['name'];

$subject = $_POST['subject']; 

$comment = $_POST['message'];



$To          = strip_tags($to);

$TextMessage =strip_tags(nl2br($comment),"<br>");

$HTMLMessage =nl2br($comment);

$FromName    =strip_tags($name);

$FromEmail   =strip_tags($email);

$Subject     =strip_tags($subject);



$boundary1   =rand(0,9)."-"

.rand(10000000000,9999999999)."-"

.rand(10000000000,9999999999)."=:"

.rand(10000,99999);

$boundary2   =rand(0,9)."-".rand(10000000000,9999999999)."-"

.rand(10000000000,9999999999)."=:"

.rand(10000,99999);



 

for($i=0; $i < count($_FILES['youfile']['name']); $i++){

if(is_uploaded_file($_FILES['fileatt']['tmp_name'][$i]) && 

   !empty($_FILES['fileatt']['size'][$i]) && 

   !empty($_FILES['fileatt']['name'][$i])){

     

$attach      ='yes';

$end         ='';



   $handle      =fopen($_FILES['fileatt']['tmp_name'][$i], 'rb'); 

   $f_contents  =fread($handle, $_FILES['fileatt']['size'][$i]); 

   $attachment[]=chunk_split(base64_encode($f_contents));

   fclose($handle); 



$ftype[]       =$_FILES['fileatt']['type'][$i];

$fname[]       =$_FILES['fileatt']['name'][$i];

}

}



/***************************************************************

 Creating Email: Headers, BODY

 1- HTML Email WIthout Attachment!! <<-------- H T M L ---------

 ***************************************************************/

#---->Headers Part

$Headers     =<<<AKAM

From: $FromName <$FromEmail>

Reply-To: $FromEmail

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

    boundary="$boundary1"

AKAM;



#---->BODY Part

$Body        =<<<AKAM

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

    boundary="$boundary1"



This is a multi-part message in MIME format.



--$boundary1

Content-Type: text/plain;

    charset="windows-1256"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable



$TextMessage

--$boundary1

Content-Type: text/html;

    charset="windows-1256"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable



$HTMLMessage



--$boundary1--

AKAM;



/***************************************************************

 2- HTML Email WIth Multiple Attachment <<----- Attachment ------

 ***************************************************************/

 

if($attach=='yes') {



$attachments='';

$Headers     =<<<AKAM

From: $FromName <$FromEmail>

Reply-To: $FromEmail

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;

    boundary="$boundary1"

AKAM;



for($j=0;$j<count($ftype); $j++){

$attachments.=<<<ATTA

--$boundary1

Content-Type: $ftype[$j];

    name="$fname[$i]"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

Content-Disposition: attachment;

    filename="$fname[$j]"



$attachment[$j]



ATTA;

}



$Body        =<<<AKAM

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.



--$boundary1

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

    boundary="$boundary2"



--$boundary2

Content-Type: text/plain;

    charset="windows-1256"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable



$TextMessage

--$boundary2

Content-Type: text/html;

    charset="windows-1256"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable



$HTMLMessage



--$boundary2--



$attachments

--$boundary1--

AKAM;

}



/***************************************************************

 Sending Email

 ***************************************************************/

$ok=mail($To, $Subject, $Body, $Headers);

echo $ok?"<h1> Mail Sent</h1>":"<h1> Mail not SEND</h1>";

?>

richard at richard-sumilang dot com
22-Mar-2008 08:12


If you are using the sendmail app from an exim package or something you don't really need to change the normal parameters PHP gives it (-t -i) as other posts described.





I just added "-f myemail@foo.com" and it worked.





One thing that got me stuck for a few hours was trying to figure out why the return-path was set as the user (user running php) and not what I was setting it with the -f option then I later found at that in order to forcefully set the return-path the user account running the command must be in exim's trusted users configuration! It helps to add trusted_groups as well then everything works fine :)


- Richard Sumilang

jano ATSOMERANDOMTEXTjanogarcia es
28-Jan-2008 10:31


This is a simple and quick (dirty?) fix for encoding long UTF-8 email subjects.



<?php



    $subject= mb_encode_mimeheader($subject,"UTF-8", "B", "\n");



?>



Changing the $transfer_encoding parameter* from B (Base64) to Q (Quoted-Printable) seems to work too.



*See the mb_encode_mimeheader documentation here http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-encode-mimeheader.php



This one is based on the previously posted solution by J.Halmu http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php#75886 , added the two last parameters to prevent long subjects from breaking the email. It worked flawlessly on a RHEL environmet. No further tests, sorry.

Tomix
17-Jan-2008 03:53


send e-mail in utf-8





there is already a solution from omgs. but with a longer subject line there could be problem (splitting the subject line in a encoded character).





here my solution:





<?php


// hmm no better solution?


function imap8bit(&$item, $key) {


 $item = imap_8bit($item);


}





function email($e_mail, $subject, $message, $headers)


 {


  // add headers for utf-8 message


  $headers .= "\r\n";


  $headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";


  $headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\r\n";


  $headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable\r\n";





  // encode subject


  //=?UTF-8?Q?encoded_text?=





  // work a round: for subject with wordwrap


  // not fixed, no possibility to have one in a single char


  $subject = wordwrap($subject, 25, "\n", FALSE);


  $subject = explode("\n", $subject);


  array_walk($subject, imap8bit);


  $subject = implode("\r\n ", $subject);


  $subject = "=?UTF-8?Q?".$subject."?=";





  // encode e-mail message


  $message = imap_8bit($message);





  return(mail("$e_mail", "$subject", "$message", "$headers"));


 }


?>

mortoray at ecircle-ag dot com
10-Jan-2008 03:35


Apparently if using the mbstring library, and using overriden functions, the "mail" command appears to use "Content-Transfer-Encoding: BASE64" by default.  Which if you combine it with PEAR Mail_Mime you'll get mails that, although they appear RFC compliant, not mailer can read correctly.





To fix this it appears you should add a fixed header in the mail command (this one assumes the pear mime module is 7bit clean, perhaps 8bit would also be fine)





<?php $headers['Content-Transfer-Encoding'] = '7bit'; ?>

d
25-Dec-2007 09:39


When sending html formatted mails to gmail accounts you might notice that the html is shown in plain text. This happens when you send from an unix system and gmail treats the "\r\n" line ends in a wrong way. Use "\n" instead at it will be fine.





Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n


instead of


Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n

hn at nesland dot net
03-Nov-2007 12:37


Tired of idiots and imbeciles who creates unsecure php-code and lets spammers abuse mail()? Try this dirty trick:



With auto_prepend, prepend this file:

<?php

// You need to install pecl-module, runkit.

dl("runkit.so");



// We could rename the function, but that currently makes my apache segfault, but this works :-P

runkit_function_copy ( "mail","intmail" );

runkit_function_remove( "mail" );



function mail( $to, $subject, $message, $additional_headers = null, $additional_parameters = null ) {



    $___domain = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];

 

    $fp = fopen("/tmp/my_super_mail_logg", "a");

    fwrite( $fp, date("d.m.y H:i:s") . " " . $___domain . ": $to / $subject\n");

    fclose( $fp );



    return intmail( $to, $subject, $message, $additional_headers, $additional_parameters );

}

?>



You probably shouldn't log to /tmp, or any other place as the webserver-user, see syslog-functions ;)



And of course you can manipulate the different parameters, like adding custom headers to each email (For instance; "X-From-Web: {$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']}")..

phpcoder at cyberpimp dot ig3 dot net
27-Sep-2007 03:51


In addition to the $to parameter restrictions on Windows (ie. address can not be in "name <user@example.com>" format), the same restrictions apply to the parsed Cc and Bcc headers of the $additional_headers parameter.



However, you can include a To header in $additional_parameters which lists the addresses in any RFC-2822 format.  (For display purposes only.  You still need to list the bare addresses in the $to parameter.)

Gianluigi_Zanettini-MegaLab.it
10-Aug-2007 06:57


Please note that using an address in this format "Zane, CEO - MegaLab.it" <myaddrr@mydomain> (" are needed due to comma) works as expected under *nix, but WON'T WORK under Windows.



This is an example



<?php

mail("\"Zane, CEO - MegaLab.it\" <myaddrr@mydomain>", "prova da test_zane", "dai funziona...");

?>



It works under *unix, but it doensn't under Win: different error are reported:



Warning: mail() [function.mail]: SMTP server response: 553 5.0.0 <"Zane>... Unbalanced '"'



Warning: mail() [function.mail]: SMTP server response: 501 5.5.4 Invalid Address

J.Halmu
20-Jun-2007 11:10


I use text/plain charaset=iso-8859-1 and get bad headers complain from amavis. This helped me:



[code]

$subject = mb_encode_mimeheader('ääööö test test öäöäöä','UTF-8');

[/code] 



php-version 5.2.2

Alex Jaspersen
31-May-2007 06:03


For qmail users, I have written a function that talks directly to qmail-queue, rather than going through the sendmail wrapper used by mail(). Thus it allows more direct control over the message (for example, you can adapt the function to display "undisclosed recipients" in to the To: header). It also performs careful validation of the e-mail addresses passed to it, making it more difficult for spammers to exploit your scripts.



Please note that this function differs from the mail() function in that the from address must be passed as a _separate_ argument. It is automatically put into the message headers and _does not_ need to be included in $additional_headers.



$to can either be an array or a single address contained in a string.

$message should not contain any carriage return characters - only linefeeds.



No validation is performed on $additional_headers. This is mostly unnecessary because qmail will ignore any additional To: headers injected by a malicious user. However if you have some strange mail setup it might be a problem.



The function returns false if the message fails validation or is rejected by qmail-queue, and returns true on success.



<?php

function qmail_queue($to, $from, $subject, $message, $additional_headers = "")

{

    // qmail-queue location and hostname used for Message-Id

    $cmd = "/var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue";

    $hostname = trim(file_get_contents("/var/qmail/control/me"));

    

    // convert $to into an array

    if(is_scalar($to))

        $to = array($to);

    

    // BEGIN VALIDATION

    // e-mail address validation

    $e = "/^[-+\\.0-9=a-z_]+@([-0-9a-z]+\\.)+([0-9a-z]){2,4}$/i";

    // from address

    if(!preg_match($e, $from)) return false;

    // to address(es)

    foreach($to as $rcpt)

    {

        if(!preg_match($e, $rcpt)) return false;

    }

    

    // subject validation (only printable 7-bit ascii characters allowed)

    // needs to be adapted to allow for foreign languages with 8-bit characters

    if(!preg_match("/^[\\040-\\176]+$/", $subject)) return false;

    

    // END VALIDATION

    

    // open qmail-queue process

    $dspec = array

    (

        array("pipe", "r"), // message descriptor

        array("pipe", "r") // envelope descriptor

    );

    $pipes = array();

    $proc = proc_open($cmd, $dspec, $pipes);

    if(!is_resource($proc)) return false;

    

    // write additional headers

    if(!empty($additional_headers))

    {

        fwrite($pipes[0], $additional_headers . "\n");

    }

    

    // write to/from/subject/date/message-ID headers

    fwrite($pipes[0], "To: " . $to[0]); // first recipient

    for($i = 1; $i < sizeof($to); $i++) // additional recipients

    {

        fwrite($pipes[0], ", " . $to[$i]);

    }

    fwrite($pipes[0], "\nSubject: " . $subject . "\n");

    fwrite($pipes[0], "From: " . $from . "\n");

    fwrite($pipes[0], "Message-Id: <" . md5(uniqid(microtime())) . "@" . $hostname . ">\n");

    fwrite($pipes[0], "Date: " . date("r") . "\n\n");

    fwrite($pipes[0], $message);

    fwrite($pipes[0], "\n");

    fclose($pipes[0]);

    

    // write from address and recipients

    fwrite($pipes[1], "F" . $from . "\0");

    foreach($to as $rcpt)

    {

        fwrite($pipes[1], "T" . $rcpt . "\0");

    }

    fwrite($pipes[1], "\0");

    fclose($pipes[1]);

    

    // return true on success.

    return proc_close($proc) == 0;

}

?>

Geoff in Montreal
01-May-2007 10:07


Here is a PHP Mail Multipart/Alternative (Plain Text and HTML) code for *nix servers (Unix Like Servers)... if you are hosted on a windows server, simply replace all "\n" or "\n\n" in the below code to "\r\n" or "\r\n\r\n" respectively.





This code is for anyone who has already written an HTML page for their PHP mail... there are several PHP > HTML free translators on the internet.  You may use one of them to translate your HTML code to PHP to insert into the following code.  All there needs to change is to place a backslash before any quotations (EX: ... confirm that \"Our Company\" has ...), and to end each line with a newline character (EX: \n )...





This code method has been successfully tested with Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, G-Mail, and Yahoo Mail.  I hope this helps out anyone that is writing a multipart/alternative PHP mailer script.





<?php





# -=-=-=- PHP FORM VARIABLES (add as many as you would like)





$name = $_POST["name"];


$email = $_POST["email"];


$invoicetotal = $_POST["invoicetotal"];





# -=-=-=- MIME BOUNDARY





$mime_boundary = "----Your_Company_Name----".md5(time());





# -=-=-=- MAIL HEADERS





$to = "$email";


$subject = "This text will display in the email's Subject Field";





$headers = "From: Our Company <company@ourcompany.com>\n";


$headers .= "Reply-To: Our Company <company@ourcompany.com>\n";


$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";


$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"$mime_boundary\"\n";





# -=-=-=- TEXT EMAIL PART





$message = "--$mime_boundary\n";


$message .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n";


$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n\n";





$message .= "$name:\n\n";


$message .= "This email is to confirm that \"Our Company\" has received your order.\n";


$message .= "Please send payment of $invoicetotal to our company address.\n\n";


$message .= "Thank You.\n\n";





# -=-=-=- HTML EMAIL PART


 


$message .= "--$mime_boundary\n";


$message .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8\n";


$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n\n";





$message .= "<html>\n";


$message .= "<body style=\"font-family:Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size:14px; color:#666666;\">\n"; 


$message .= "$name:<br>\n";


$message .= "<br>\n";


$message .= "This email is to confirm that \"Our Company\" has received your order.<br>\n";


$message .= "Please send payment of $invoicetotal to our company address.<br>\n\n";


$message .= "<br>\n";


$message .= "Thank You.<br>\n\n";


$message .= "</body>\n";


$message .= "</html>\n";





# -=-=-=- FINAL BOUNDARY





$message .= "--$mime_boundary--\n\n";





# -=-=-=- SEND MAIL





$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );


echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed";





?>

Josh
09-Mar-2007 06:05


While trying to send attachments I ran into the problem of having the beginning part of my encoded data being cut off.



A fact that I didn't see mentioned anywhere explicitly (except maybe in the RFC, which admittedly I didn't read fully) was that two newlines are required before you start the encoded data:



Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n

Content-Type: application/zip; name="test_file.zip"\n

\n  //<--- if this newline isn't here your data will get cut off

DATA GOES HERE

hans111 at yahoo dot com
01-Mar-2007 04:54


I had a lot of trouble trying to send multipart messages to gmail accounts until I discovered gmail does not like carriage returns, even under unix I have to use only new lines (\n) and forget about the (\r) . Other email clients such as eudora, outlook, hotmail or yahoo seem not to have issues about the "missing" \r . Hope it helps.

bigtree at dontspam dot 29a dot nl
28-Feb-2007 12:46


Since lines in $additional_headers must be separated by \n on Unix and \r\n on Windows, it might be useful to use the PHP_EOL constant which contains the correct value on either platform.



Note that this variable was introduced in PHP 5.0.2 so to write portable code that also works in PHP versions before that, use the following code to make sure it exists:



<?php

if (!defined('PHP_EOL')) define ('PHP_EOL', strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS,0,3) == 'WIN') ? "\r\n" : "\n");

?>

admin at chatfamy dot com
30-Jan-2007 08:37


One thing it can be difficult to control with this function is the envelope "from" address. The envelope "from" address is distinct from the address that appears in the "From:" header of the email. It is what sendmail uses in its "MAIL FROM/RCPT TO" exchange with the receiving mail server. It also typically shows up in the "Return-Path:" header, but this need not be the case. The whole reason it is called an "envelope" address is that appears _outside_ of the message header and body, in the raw SMTP exchange between mail servers.



The default envelope "from" address on unix depends on what sendmail implementation you are using. But typically it will be set to the username of the running process followed by "@" and the hostname of the machine. In a typical configuration this will look something like apache@box17.isp.net.



If your emails are being rejected by receiving mail servers, or if you need to change what address bounce emails are sent to, you can change the envelope "from" address to solve your problems.



To change the envelope "from" address on unix, you specify an "-r" option to your sendmail binary. You can do this globally in php.ini by adding the "-r" option to the "sendmail_path" command line. You can also do it programmatically from within PHP by passing "-r address@domain.com" as the "additional_parameters" argument to the mail() function (the 5th argument). If you specify an address both places, the sendmail binary will be called with two "-r" options, which may have undefined behavior depending on your sendmail implementation. With the Postfix MTA, later "-r" options silently override earlier options, making it possible to set a global default and still get sensible behavior when you try to override it locally. 



On Windows, the the situation is a lot simpler. The envelope "from" address there is just the value of "sendmail_from" in the php.ini file. You can override it locally with ini_set().

tdaniel at univ dot haifa dot ac dot il
26-Oct-2006 11:17


I had trouble getting multiple emails sent for Outlook accounts (a single PHP page performed 2 mail() calls). 



The PHP mail() function works correctly, but the same mails that were recieved on a private POP3 server were randomly missing by our intranet Outlook exchange server.



If you have the same problem, try to verify that the "Message-ID: " is unique at the $headers string. i.e.



<?php

$headers = [...] . 

"Message-ID: <". time() .rand(1,1000). "@".$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].">". "\r\n" [...];

?>



(rand() is used only for demonstration purposes. a better way is to use an index variable that increments (i++) after each mail)



I noticed that when multiple messeges were sent simultaneously, the message-id was the same (probably there was no miliseconds differential). My guess is that Outlook is collating messages with the same message-ID; a thing that causes only one email to pass to the Outlook inbox instead of a few.

i5513
27-Sep-2006 08:30


[EDITOR's NOTE: Following based off of a note originally by marcelo dot maraboli at usm dot cl which has been removed.]





I had a trouble with marcelo' function, I had to add "$val == 63" condition into "if" sentence for '?' character





<?php


# From marcelo post:


function encode_iso88591($string)


{


  $text = '=?iso-8859-1?q?';


 


  for( $i = 0 ; $i < strlen($string) ; $i++ )


  {


   $val = ord($string[$i]);


   if($val > 127 or $val == 63)


   {


     $val = dechex($val);


     $text .= '='.$val;


   }


   else


   {


       $text .= $string[$i];


   }


  


  }


  $text .= '?=';


 


  return $text;


}





and later use:





       // create email


       $msg = wordwrap($msg, 70);


       $to = "destination@company.com";


       $subject = encode_iso88591("hoydía caminé !!");


       $headers =    "MIME-Versin: 1.0\r\n" .


               "Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed\r\n" .


               "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\r\n" .


               "From: $from\r\n" .


               "X-Mailer: PHP" . phpversion();





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


?>

johniskew2
19-Sep-2006 04:28


An important rule of thumb, because it seems few really follow it and it can alleviate so many headaches: When filtering your email headers for injection characters use a regular expression to judge whether the user's input is valid.  For example to see if the user entered a valid e-mail address use something like  [a-zA-Z0-9._%-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}.  Dont try to filter out bad characters (like searching for LF or CR), because you will ALWAYS miss something.  You can be sure your application is more secure going this route....provided the regular expression is valid!  This same point goes for any sort of form input not just for sending out emails.

thomas at p-devion dot de
24-Aug-2006 05:46


Change the function addattachment for multipartmail to auto detect the mime_content_type ... 





<?php


     function addattachment($file){


         $fname = substr(strrchr($file, "/"), 1);


         $data = file_get_contents($file);


         $i = count($this->parts);


         $content_id = "part$i." . sprintf("%09d", crc32($fname)) . strrchr($this->to_address, "@");


         $this->parts[$i] = "Content-Type: ".mime_content_type($file)."; name=\"$fname\"\r\n" .


                           "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n" .


                           "Content-ID: <$content_id>\r\n" .