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Mailparse> <Mail Functions
Last updated: Fri, 22 Aug 2008

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mail

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

mail — Enviar correo

Descripción

bool mail ( string $para , string $asunto , string $mensaje [, string $cabeceras_adicionales [, string $parametros_adicionales ]] )

Envía un correo electrónico.

Lista de parámetros

para

Recipiente, o recipientes del correo.

El formato de esta cadena debe ser compatible con el documento » RFC 2822. Algunos ejemplos son:

  • usuario@example.com
  • usuario@example.com, otrousuario@example.com
  • Usuario <usuario@example.com>
  • Usuario <usuario@example.com>, Otro Usuario <otrousuario@example.com>

asunto

Asunto del correo electrónico a ser enviado.

Caution

Éste no debe contener caracteres de salto de línea, o es posible que el correo no sea enviado apropiadamente.

mensaje

Mensaje a ser enviado.

Cada línea debe ser sepadarada con un caracter LF (\n). Las líneas no deberían exceder los 70 caracteres.

Caution

(Sólo en Windows) Cuando PHP sostiene comunicación con el servidor SMTP directamente, si un punto es encontrado al comienzo de la línea, éste es removido. Para contrarestar este comportamiento, reemplace estas ocurrencias con dos puntos.

<?php
$texto = str_replace("\n.", "\n..", $texto);
?>

cabeceras_adicionales (opcional)

Cadena a ser insertada al final de la cabecera de correo electrónico.

Por lo general, este parámetro es usado para agregar cabeceras extra (From, Cc y Bcc). Múltiples cabeceras extra deben ser separadan con una secuencia CRLF (\r\n).

Note: Cuando envíe correo, el mensaje debe contener una cabecera From. Ésta puede definirse con el parámetro cabeceras_adicionales , o puede definirse un valor predeterminado en php.ini.
No hacer esto resultará en un mensaje de error similar a Warning: mail(): "sendmail_from" not set in php.ini or custom "From:" header missing. La cabecera From define también Return-Path bajo Windows.

Note: Si los mensajes no son recibidos, intente usar un caracter LF (\n) solamente. Algunos agentes de transferencia de correo de pobre calidad en Unix reemplazan LF por CRLF automáticamente (lo cual conlleva a caracteres CR dobles si se usa CRLF). Esto debe ser usado como último recurso, ya que no es compatible con la especificación en » RFC 2822.

parametros_adicionales (opcional)

El parámetro parametros_adicionales puede ser usado para pasar un parámetro extra al programa configurado para ser usado cuando se envíe correo mediante la opción de configuración sendmail_path. Por ejemplo, este parámetro puede usarse para definir la dirección de sobre del origen cuando se usa sendmail con la opción -f.

El usuario bajo el que corre su servidor web debe ser agregado como un usuario confiable en la configuración de sendmail para prevenir que se agregue una cabecera 'X-Warning' a los mensajes cuando el origen de sobre (-f) sea definido usando este método. Para usuarios de sendmail, este archivo es /etc/mail/trusted-users.

Valores retornados

Devuelve TRUE si el correo fue aceptado satisfactoriamente para su envío, o FALSE de lo contrario.

Es importante notar que solo porque el correo sea aceptado para su envio NO quiere decir que el correo realmente vaya a llegar a su destino planeado.

Registro de cambios

Versión Descripción
4.3.0 (Sólo en Windows) Todas las cabeceras personalizadas (como From, Cc, Bcc y Date) son soportadas, y no son sensibles a mayúsculas y minúsculas). (Dado que las cabeceras personalizadas no son interpretadas por el MTA en primer lugar, sino interpretadas por PHP, PHP < 4.3 sólo soportaba el elemento de cabecera Cc y era sensible a mayúsculas y minúsculas).
4.2.3 El parámetro parametros_adicionales es deshabilitado en modo seguro y la función mail() producirá un mensaje de advertencia y devolverá FALSE cuando sea usado.
4.0.5 El parámetro parametros_adicionales fue agregado.

Ejemplos

Example #1 Envío de correo.

Uso de mail() para enviar un correo simple:

<?php
// El mensaje
$mensaje = "Línea 1\nLínea 2\nLínea 3";

// En caso de que cualquier línea tenga más de 70 caracteres, habría
// que usar wordwrap()
$mensaje = wordwrap($mensaje, 70);

// Enviar
mail('cafeinado@example.com', 'Mi Asunto', $mensaje);
?>

Example #2 Envío de correo con cabeceras extra.

La adición de cabeceras básicas, que le indican al MUA las direcciones From y Reply-To:

<?php
$para      = 'nadie@example.com';
$asunto    = 'el asunto';
$mensaje   = 'hola';
$cabeceras = 'From: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
    'Reply-To: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
    'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();

mail($para, $asunto, $mensaje, $cabeceras);
?>

Example #3 Envío de correo con un parámetro de línea de comandos adicional.

El parámetro parametros_adicionales puede ser usado para pasar un parámetro adicional al programa configurado para usarse cuando se envía correo con sendmail_path.

<?php
mail('nadie@example.com', 'el asunto', 'el mensaje', null,
   '-fwebmaster@example.com');
?>

Example #4 Envío de correo electrónico HTML

También es posible enviar correo electrónico en formato HTML con mail().

<?php
// múltiples recipientes
$para  = 'aidan@example.com' . ', '; // note la coma
$para .= 'wez@example.com';

// asunto
$asunto = 'Recordatorios de Cumpleaños para Agosto';

// mensaje
$mensaje = '
<html>
<head>
  <title>Recordatorios de Cumpleaños para Agosto</title>
</head>
<body>
  <p>¡Aquí están los cumpleaños que vienen en Agosto!</p>
  <table>
    <tr>
      <th>Persona</th><th>Día</th><th>Mes</th><th>Año</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Juan</td><td>3</td><td>Agosto</td><td>1970</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Sandra</td><td>17</td><td>Agosto</td><td>1973</td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</body>
</html>
';

// Para enviar correo HTML, la cabecera Content-type debe definirse
$cabeceras  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$cabeceras .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";

// Cabeceras adicionales
$cabeceras .= 'To: María <maria@example.com>, Kelly <kelly@example.com>' . "\r\n";
$cabeceras .= 'From: Recordatorio de Cumpleaños <recordatorio@example.com>' . "\r\n";
$cabeceras .= 'Cc: archivo@example.com' . "\r\n";
$cabeceras .= 'Bcc: chequeo@example.com' . "\r\n";

// Enviarlo
mail($para, $asunto, $mensaje, $cabeceras);
?>

Note: Si desea enviar HTML u otros correos complejos, es recomendable usar el paquete PEAR » PEAR::Mail_Mime.

Notes

Note: La implementación en Windows de mail() difiere en varias formas de la implementación en Unix. Primero, no usa un binario local para componer mensajes, en su lugar opera directamente sobre sockets, lo que quiere decir que se requiere de un MTA que escuche sobre un socket de red (el cual puede estar en el host local o en una máquina remota).
Segundo, las cabeceras personalizadas como From:, Cc:, Bcc: y Date: no son interpretadas por el MTA en primera instancia, son interpretadas por PHP.
Por lo anterior, el parámetro para no debería ser una dirección en la forma "Algo <alguien@example.com>". Puede que el comando de correo no interprete apropiadamente ésto cuando se comunique con el MTA.

Note: Es posible enviar correo electrónico con archivos adjuntos y tipos especiales de contenido (p.ej. HTML) usando esta función. Esto se consigue mediante el uso de codificación MIME - para más información, vea este » artículo de Zend o las » Clases Mime PEAR.

Note: Cabe anotar que la función mail() no es recomendable para el envío de correo electrónico en volumen por medio de un ciclo. Esta función abre y cierra un socket SMTP para cada correo, por lo que no resulta muy eficiente.
Para el envío de grandes cantidades de correo electrónico, vea los paquetes » PEAR::Mail y » PEAR::Mail_Queue.

Note: Los siguientes documentos RFC pueden resultar útiles: » RFC 1896, » RFC 2045, » RFC 2046, » RFC 2047, » RFC 2048, » RFC 2049, y » RFC 2822.

Ver también



Mailparse> <Mail Functions
Last updated: Fri, 22 Aug 2008
 
add a note add a note User Contributed Notes
mail
Abner Diaz
26-Aug-2008 09:55
The mail function doesn't work properly under Windows, in case you are going crazy and wondering what is happening.

http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=28038

This is not a bug report.  Just letting people know that they are not crazy.
goblitas at khipu dot net
07-Aug-2008 08:14
I have a problem with mail() function on IIS 6, WINDOWS 2003, and PHP, my code work on a linux server, but don't work on my WINDOWS SERVER, mi php.ini is configured with SMTP:mail.khipu.net and from:webmaster@khipu.net, some body know how to solve this problem or maybe is a problem of some rule in my ISA SERVER.

thank you for your comments
bob
15-Jul-2008 01:51
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 06:55
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>";
?>
fogidas at yahoo dot com
14-May-2008 04:18
I think gmail works fine without adding '\n\n' , what doesn't seem to work is the Reply To header. Has anyone paid attention if you try to reply the mail  it takes "From " email and not Reply to.
jyotsnachannagiri at gmail dot com
06-May-2008 01:09
If you are sending an email to Gmail account you need to add two "\n\n" at the end of headers (Don't use single "\n"). If you use single "\n" all the headers will be displayed in the message when received person is viewing the message.

Example:

$headers  = "MIME-Version: 1.0 "."\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 "."\n";
..........
.......
$headers .= "......"."\n\n";
ben at ben-griffiths dot com
27-Mar-2008 02:45
As [apdhanushka at yahoo dot com] stated, you could use PHPMailer to get around being placed in the Spam folder, however I would also reccomend Swiftmailer:

http://www.swiftmailer.org/
apdhanushka at yahoo dot com
30-Jan-2008 04:21
Are you getting spammed while sendig emails using php mail() function to yahoo or hotmail?

 It is a common problem for all using php mail function. To solve this there
are so many answers I have seen in the internet and they do not hit problem
correctly.

Actually the problem here is if we send mails using php mail function we do
not have a signature and other mailing systems thinks that we are spamers.

So the solution is using a free remote smtp host like gmail to send our mails.
It is not hard because we have a free php smtp project called PHPMailer. You
can download it from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=26031.
You do not need to install it on your server and you can upload it to the server with your code.

It is very easy to understand how it is used to send mails using examples
zipped with PHPMailer. The following code is to send emails using gmail and
to do that you have to have a gmail mail account. Which can easily be created
by visiting http://gmail.com. Your mails will
send using that mail account and they will never become spams...

You can follow the following link to get the code to send emails using gmail's free smtp service.
http://bestdeveloper.blogspot.com/
apdhanushka at yahoo dot com
30-Jan-2008 12:05
It is a common problem for all using php mail function. To solve this there
are so many answers I have seen in the internet and they do not hit problem
correctly.

Actually the problem here is if we send mails using php mail function we do
not have a signature and other mailing systems thinks that we are spamers.

So the solution is using a free remote smtp host like gmail to send our mails.
It is not hard because we have a free php smtp project called PHPMailer. You  can download it from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=26031 .
You do not need to install it on your server.

It is very easy to understand how it is used to send mails using examples
zipped with PHPMailer. The following code is to send emails using gmail and
to do that you have to have a gmail mail account. Which can easily be created
by visiting http://gmail.com. Your mails will
send using that mail account and they will never become spams...

To see the complete code for sending emails use following link

http://bestdeveloper.blogspot.com
jano ATSOMERANDOMTEXTjanogarcia es
28-Jan-2008 02:31
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 07:53
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:
----
// 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"));
 }
I.Ruau
02-Dec-2007 06:23
I recently searched for a decent regex to *correctly* validate e-mail addresses according to RFC-2822.

Most regexes I found on the web (including in the comments here) are way too strict.
Then I stumbled upon this compliant parser:
http://code.iamcal.com/php/rfc822/?C=D;O=A

FWIW here is the complete, unrolled regex... which is quite edifying! ;-)
http://code.iamcal.com/php/rfc822/full_regexp.txt

Hope this helps.
hn at nesland dot net
02-Nov-2007 05:37
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']}")..
Ben
03-Oct-2007 11:14
There was a comment that

mail("User Name <username@email.com>","Subject Here",$msg,"From: us@mysite.com");

does not work. I've always used that and never had any issues - from Linux servers. I don't see how this could be different in IE vs Firefox; I've always gotten the same result in both. Just tried it on a Windows server and got this as a bounce back:

<User Name <username@email.com>:
x.x.x.x does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 Requested action not taken: 550 No such recipient
Giving up on x.x.x.x.

(Details changed to protect the innocent/guilty (for using a Windows server))

Took me a while to find the bounce until I used ini_set('sendmail_from', 'my@account');

So it is probably  trying to deliver to "User Name <username" instead of simply "username".
largo at email dot pcleak dot com
03-Oct-2007 02:01
hello ok i have this email form right and it is
<?php
if (isset($_REQUEST['email']))
//if "email" is filled out, send email
  {
  //send email
  $email = $_REQUEST['email'] ;
  $subject = $_REQUEST['subject'] ;
  $message = $_REQUEST['message'] ;
  mail( "someone@example.com", "Subject: $subject",
  $message, "From: $email" );
  echo "Thank you for using our mail form";
  }
else
//if "email" is not filled out, display the form
  {
  echo "<form method='post' action='mailform.php'>
  Email: <input name='email' type='text' /><br />
  Subject: <input name='subject' type='text' /><br />
  Message:<br />
  <textarea name='message' rows='15' cols='40'>
  </textarea><br />
  <input type='submit' />
  </form>";
  }
?>
i like it but i want to change like but i want it to ask for sending it "TOO" and it automatically post the sender
phpcoder at cyberpimp dot ig3 dot net
27-Sep-2007 08:51
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.)
omgs
30-Aug-2007 01:57
I haven't seen in this page a reference about how to properly handle subject encoding when using non-ascii characters. I've found that info at http://www.johanvanmol.org/content/view/34/37/1/3/, which I paste:

"According to RFC 2822, mail header fields, including the subject, MUST be composed of printable US-ASCII characters (i.e., characters that have values between 33 and 126, inclusive). So if you want a subject with accents, you must encode it from your original character set to a US-ASCII character set. There are 2 of ways to do this: quoted-printable or base64.

[...]

Now we have an encoded subject, but our mail reader won't know that. So we need to tell it by formatting our subject as follows: "=?" charset "?" encoding "?" encoded-text "?=" , where charset is the original character set and encoding is either "Q" for Quoted-Printable or "B" for Base64.
E.g The subject containing the Quoted-Printable ISO-8859-1 string "Voilà une message", is written as:
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Voil=E0_une_message?=
The Base64 version of the ISO-8859-1 string is:
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?B?Vm9pbOAgdW5lIG1lc3NhZ2U=?=
The Quoted-Printable version of the UTF-8 string is:
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Voil=C3=A0_une_message?=
The Base64 version of the UTF-8 string is:
Subject: =?UTF-8?B?Vm9pbMOgIHVuZSBtZXNzYWdl?=
"

"Raw" non-encoded subjects can work and modern mail clients handle it properly, but I found that at least using utf-8 as encoding, the spam analizers complain stating "BAD HEADER Non-encoded 8-bit data". To prevent this, and taking the info above, I decided to use base64, which at least seems to have specific functions (and because it works, of course). So, one could use the following code:

<?php
...
$charset='UTF-8';
$subject='Subject with extra chars: áéíóú';
$encoded_subject="=?$charset?B?".base64_encode($subject)."?=\n";
$to=mail@foo.com;
$body='This is the body';
$headers="From: ".$from."\n"
    . "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=$charset; format=flowed\n"
    . "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
    . "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
    . "X-Mailer: PHP\n";
mail($to,$encoded_subject, $body,$headers);

?>

Of course, this can be "enhanced" by encoding only if there are non-ASCII characters, but I don't think I need it. Maybe the CPU work, used time and results don't deserve it.
Gianluigi_Zanettini-MegaLab.it
09-Aug-2007 11:57
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
pavolzetor at gmail dot com
01-Aug-2007 08:47
if you send mail to gmail.com you don't use "\r\n" and you use only "\n" in headers
bsaul at inwind dot it
23-Jun-2007 02:19
First excuse me for bad english. I'm working on a function that send html or text or both, e-mail message. I try all the example but no one working on my system (windows XP with PostCast SMTP server). Finally i try this and work. I hope your find useful:

function mailTo ($from, $to, $oggetto, $contenuto, $type = "both", $reply = true) {

    // If $contenuto == file reading
    $messaggio = @file_get_contents( $content, 1);
    if ($messaggio) { $contenuto = $messaggio; }
    $messaggio = '';

    // Standar Header
    $crlf = chr(10) . chr(13);
    $intestazione  = "To: {$to}" . $crlf;
    $intestazione .= "From: {$from}" . $crlf;
    $intestazione .= "Return-Path: " . (($reply)? $from : substr_replace($from, "noreply", 0, strpos($from, '@'))) . $crlf;
    $intestazione .= 'Reply-To: ' .(($reply)? $from : substr_replace($from, "noreply", 0, strpos($from, '@'))) . $crlf;
   $intestazione .= 'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion() . $crlf;

    // MIME boundary
    $separatore = 'PHP' . md5(uniqid(time()));
    // MIME Header
    $intestazione .= 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . $crlf;

    switch ($type){
        case 'html' :
                        // Header for client non MIME compatible
            $intestazione .= 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-15' . $crlf;
            $intestazione .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit' . $crlf;
            $messaggio .= "\n{$contenuto}\n";
            break;

        case 'both' :
            $intestazione .= "Content-Type: multipart/alternative;\n\tboundary=\"" . $separatore . '"' . $crlf;
            // Create message for no mime client
            $messaggio .= "For English People: This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\nIf you are reading this, consider upgrading your e-mail client to a MIME-compatible client.\n";
            $messaggio .= "For Italian People: Questo è un messaggio MIME.\nSe si stà leggendo questa nota, consigliamo l\'aggiornamento del programma di posta elettronica con uno compatibile MIME";
            $messaggio .= "\n--{$separatore}\n";
            $messaggio .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15\n";
            $messaggio .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\n";

        case 'text' :
            $messaggio .= strip_tags($contenuto);
            if ($type == 'both') {
                $messaggio .= "\n--{$separatore}\n";;
                $messaggio .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-15\n";
                $messaggio .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n";
                $messaggio .= "\n{$contenuto}";
                $messaggio .= "\n--{$separatore}\n";
            }
    }

    // Send MAIL
    return  mail($to, $oggetto, $messaggio, $intestazione);

}
J.Halmu
20-Jun-2007 04:10
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
30-May-2007 11:03
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;
}
?>
James Butler
24-May-2007 12:15
Re: "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."

SERVER:
 PHP 5.0.4
 Fedora Core 4
 Apache 2.0
 Sendmail 8.13.7
 SMTP: localhost

CLIENT:
 Windows 98SE
 Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3
 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0.2800.1106

COMMAND:
 mail("User Name <username@email.com>","Subject Here",$msg,"From: us@mysite.com");

Using Firefox, no problems with the above command.
Using MSIE, won't send mail "to" address formatted as above.

COMMAND 2:
 mail("username@email.com","Subject Here",$msg,"From: us@mysite.com");

Works fine from both clients.

I mention this because it appears there is some interaction between the client and MTA that is unaccounted for in the above quote from this doc page.
junk at hostelz dot com
21-Mar-2007 01:56
Unless I'm confused, I suspect that in the code from "rsjaffe at gmail dot com" above, "\\r" and "\\n" should actually be "\r" and "\n".
Josh
09-Mar-2007 10:05
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 08:54
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 04:46
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");
?>
andy at andybev dot com
19-Feb-2007 04:56
I'm copying Ben Cooke's note from the main mail page into here because I didn't find it initially. The issue described below caused me a lot of problems because of Postfix converting a single \r\n into double new lines, resulting in corrupted mail.

=====================================================

Note that there is a big difference between the behavior of this function on Windows systems vs. UNIX systems. On Windows it delivers directly to an SMTP server, while on a UNIX system it uses a local command to hand off to the system's own MTA.

The upshot of all this is that on a Windows system your  message and headers must use the standard line endings \r\n as prescribed by the email specs. On a UNIX system the MTA's "sendmail" interface assumes that recieved data will use UNIX line endings and will turn any \n to \r\n, so you must supply only \n to mail() on a UNIX system to avoid the MTA hypercorrecting to \r\r\n.

If you use plain old \n on a Windows system, some MTAs will get a little upset. qmail in particular will refuse outright to accept any message that has a lonely \n without an accompanying \r.
admin at chatfamy dot com
30-Jan-2007 12:37
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 04:17
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 01:30
[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

# 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 09:28
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
23-Aug-2006 10:46
Change the function addattachment for multipartmail to auto detect the mime_content_type ...

     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: <$content_id>\r\n" .
                           "Content-Disposition: inline;\n" .
                           " filename=\"$fname\"\r\n" .
                           "\n" .
                           chunk_split( base64_encode($data), 68, "\n");
         return $content_id;
     }
panoramical at gmail dot com
27-Jul-2006 04:19
Searched for ages on the internet trying to find something that parses EML files and then sends them...for all of you who want to send an EML files you first have to upload it, read it, then delete it. Here's my function...it's specialised for a single form where the user uploads the EML file.

<?php

if(isset($_POST['submit']))
{

// Reads in a file (eml) a user has inputted
function eml_read_in()
{

    $file_ext = stristr($_FILES['upload']['name'], '.');
   
    // If it is an eml file
    if($file_ext == '.eml')
    {
   
        // Define vars
        $dir = 'eml/';
        $file = $dir.basename($_FILES['upload']['name']);
        $carry = 'yes';
       
        // Try and upload the file
        if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['upload']['tmp_name'], $file))
        {
       
            // Now attempt to read the file
            if($eml_file = file($file))
            {
           
                // Create the array to store preliminary headers
                $headers = array();
                $body = '';
                $ii = -1;

               
                // For every line, carry out this loop
                foreach($eml_file as $key => $value)
                {
               
                    $pattern = '^<html>';
                   
                    if(((eregi($pattern, $value)))||($carry == 'no'))
                    {
                   
                        // Stop putting data into the $headers array
                        $carry = 'no';
                        $i++;
                        $body .= $value;
                       
                    }
                   
                    else
                    {   
                       
                        // Separate each one with a colon
                        if(($eml_file_expl = explode(':', $value))&&($carry == 'yes'))
                        {

                       
                            // The row has been split in half at least...
                            if(isset($eml_file_expl[1]))
                            {
       
                                // Put it into the preliminary headers
                                $headers[$eml_file_expl[0]] = $eml_file_expl[1];
                           
                                // There might be more semicolons in it...
                                for($i=2;$i<=$count;$i++)
                                {
                           
                                    // Add the other values to the header
                                    $headers[$eml_file_expl[0]] .= ':'.$eml_file_expl[$i];
                                   
                                }
                           
                            }   
                           
                        }       
                   
                    }
                   
                }
               
                // Clear up the headers array
                $eml_values = array();
                $eml_values[to] = $headers[To];
                $eml_values[from] = $headers[From];
                $eml_values[subject] = $headers[Subject];
                $eml_values['reply-to'] = $headers['Reply-To'];
                $eml_values['content-type'] = $headers['Content-Type'];
                $eml_values[body] = $body;
               
                unlink($file);
       
                return $eml_values;
               
               
                       
            }
           
        }
       
        else
        {
       
            return '<p>File not uploaded - there was an error</p>';
                       
        }
       
    }
   
}   

// Takes information automatically from the $_FILES array...
$eml_pattern = eml_read_in()

// Headers definable...through eml_read_in() again, but I'm guessing they'll be the same for each doc...

if(mail($eml_pattern[to], $eml_pattern[subject], $eml_pattern[content], $headers)) echo 'Mail Sent';

?>
24-Jul-2006 08:55
correction for class multipartmail

<?php
function addmessage($msg = "", $ctype = "text/plain"){
         $this->parts[0] ....
?>

if you are adding attachment first and then addmessage you can easy overwrite added attachment - better use

<?php

function addmessage($msg = "", $ctype = "text/plain"){
         $this->parts[count($this->parts)] ....

?>
sander at cartel dot nl
20-Jul-2006 03:26
I found out that a ms server (ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 5.0.2195.6713) also had the problem using CRLF in the headers:

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.

The suggested fix works.

Sander
rsjaffe at gmail dot com
21-May-2006 02:10
Here's my way of detecting an attempt to hijack my mail form.

<?php #requires PHP 5 or greater
$request = array_map('trim',($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == "POST") ? $_POST : $_GET) ;

//check for spam injection
$allfields = implode('',$request) ;
$nontext = $request ;
unset($nontext['message'] );
$nontextfields = implode ('',$nontext) ;
if ((strpos ($nontextfields,"\\r")!==false) ||
    (strpos ($nontextfields,"\\n")!==false) ||
    (stripos ($allfields,"Content-Transfer-Encoding")!==false) ||
    (stripos ($allfields,"MIME-Version")!==false) ||
    (stripos ($allfields,"Content-Type")!==false) ||
    ($request['checkfield']!=$check) ||
    (empty($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']))) die('Incorrect request') ; //stop spammers ?>

First, I put the data into an array $request, then set up two strings: $allfields, which is just all fields concatenated, then $nontext, which excludes those fields in which \r\n is allowed (e.g., the message body). Any form field in which \r\n is allowed should be unset in the $nontext array before the second implode function (my message field is called 'message', so I unset that). I also include a hidden field in the form with a preset value ('checkfield', $check), so I can see if something is trying to alter all fields.

This is a combination of a lot of things mentioned in the messages below...
steve at stevewinnington dot co dot uk
13-Mar-2006 08:24
To all you guys out there having problems with mail scripts throwing back this (and you know your scripts are right!!)...

Warning: mail() [function.mail]: "sendmail_from" not set in php.ini or custom "From:" header missing in:

I had started seeing this after moving some scripts from 4.3 servers to 5.

a dirty get around is using

ini_set ("sendmail_from","a.body@acompany.com");

to force the From header.

Not ideal but it works.
;)
Nimlhug
11-Mar-2006 10:41
As noted in other, well, notes; the "additional headers" parameter can be easily exploited, when doing things like:

<?php
  mail( $_POST['to'], $_POST['subject'], $_POST['message'], 'Reply-to: '.$_POST['from']."\r\n" );
?>

An easy way of fixing this, is removing CRLFs from the header-strings, like so:

<?php
  $_POST['from'] = str_replace( "\r\n", '', $_POST['from'] );
?>

This way, the extra data will be part of the previous header.
junaid at techni-serve dot com
07-Mar-2006 09:49
Note: on class "multipartmail".  Modify the function buildmessage with the following and it will work great.

function buildmessage(){
         $this->message = "This is a multipart message