Send Mail in PHP

In this example, we will show how to send an email message to someone in PHP.

PHP Code:
<?php

echo "<html><body>";

mail ("[email protected]", "Subject", "Hello!");

echo "Sending mail...";
echo "</body></html>";

?>

 

It is that simple!

The PHP mail function has up to four parameters. The first parameter is the recipient of the message. The second parameter is the subject of the email message. The third parameter is the body of the message. And the fourth parameter is optional, which will be covered on the next page.

If the above example does not work when you view it in your browser then the Sendmail variable in your PHP setup file is probably not set correctly. In UNIX, it should be set to something like '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t'. Consult your PHP documentation for more in depth instructions.

Advanced Example

Here we will show the full capabilities of the PHP mail function.

PHP Code:
<?php

echo "<html><body>";

$recipient = "Kris Arndt <[email protected]>,[email protected]";
$subject = "Testing the mail function";
$message = "Hello!\n\nThis is the body of the message.\n\n";
$extra = "From: [email protected]\r\nReply-To: [email protected]\r\n";

mail ($recipient, $subject, $message, $extra);

echo "Sending mail...";
echo "</body></html>";

?>

 

We send an email to two people this time, by putting two email addresses in the recipient field and separating them with commas.

The fourth parameter holds extra headers for the email. We specify who the email was from and who the recipient should reply to. When entering multiple headers, separate them with the line feed and new line combination ('\r\n').