PHP mail() function

Last update on August 19 2022 21:51:14 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

Description

The mail() function is used to send a mail.

Version:

(PHP 4 and above)

Syntax:

mail(to, subject, message, extra headers, additional parameters)

Parameter:

Name	Description	Required / Optional	Type
to	Mail address to which you want to send mail	Required	String
subject	Subject of the mail	Required	String
message	Message to be sent with the mail. Each line of the message should be separated with a LF (\n). Lines should not be larger than 70 characters.	Required	String
extra headers	Additional headers like from, CC, BCC. If more than one additional headers are used, they must be separated with CRLF (Carriage return line feed), i.e. new line.	Optional	string
additional parameters	Additional parameters like - the envelope sender address when using sendmail with the -f sendmail option, can be used using this parameter.	Optional	string

Return value:

Returns true if the mail is successfully sent, otherwise, it returns false.

Value Type: boolean

Example:

<?php
$to  = '[email protected]';
$subject = 'Demo mail ';
$message = 'This is a demo mail. Please reply to make sure the mail communication is okay.';
mail($to, $subject, $message);
?>

Send a simple mail using mail() function

Browse view of the form for sending simple mail in php

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type" /><title>send mail in 
php</title>
<style type="text/css">
li {list-style-type: none;
font-size: 16pt;
}
.mail {
margin: auto;
padding-top: 10px;
padding-bottom: 10px;
width: 400px;
background : #D8F1F8;
border: 1px solid silver;
}
.mail h2 {
margin-left: 38px;
}
input {
font-size: 20pt;
}
input:focus, textarea:focus{
background-color: lightyellow;
}
input submit {
font-size: 12pt;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="mail">
<h2>Mail us</h2>
<ul>
<li><form name="mail" method="POST" action="send.php"></li>
<li>To:</li>
<li><input type="text" name="to" /></li>
<li>Subject:</li>
<li><input type="text" name="subject" /></li>
<li>Message:</li>
<li><input type="text" name="Message" /></li>
<li>&nbsp;</li>
<li><input type="submit" name="submit" value="Send"/></li>
<li>&nbsp;</li>
</form>
</ul>
</div>
</body></html>

Code of the file for handling form (code above) data :

<?php
$to = $_POST['to'] ;    
$message = $_POST['Message'] ;
mail( $to, "Mail", $message,  );
header( "Location: http://localhost/php/simple-mail.php" );
?>

Send mail with extra headers using mail() function

Browser view of the form for sending mail with extra headers in php

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="content-type" /><title>send mail in
php</title>
<style type="text/css">
li {list-style-type: none;
font-size: 16pt;
}
.mail {
margin: auto;
padding-top: 10px;
padding-bottom: 10px;
width: 400px;
background : #D8F1F8;
border: 1px solid silver;
}
.mail h2 {
margin-left: 38px;
}
input {
font-size: 20pt;<
}
input:focus, textarea:focus{
background-color: lightyellow;
}
input submit {
font-size: 12pt;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="mail">
<h2>Mail us</h2>
<ul>
<li><form name="mail" method="POST"
action="send-extra.php"></li>
<li>To:</li>
<li><input type="text" name="to"
/></li>
<li>Message:</li>
<li><input type="text" name="Message"
/></li>
<li>From:</li>
<li><input type="text" name="from"
/></li>
<li>CC:</li>
<li><input type="text" name="cc"
/></li>
<li>&nbsp;</li>
<li><input type="submit" name="submit"
value="Send"/></li>
<li>&nbsp;</li>
</form>
</ul>
</div>
</body></html>

Code of the file for handling form (code above) data:

<?php
  $to = $_POST['to'] ;    
  $message = $_POST['Message'] ;
  $from = $_POST['from'];
  $cc = $_POST['cc'];
  $headers =  "From: ".$_POST['from']."\r\n" .
"CC: ".$_POST['cc'];
  mail( $to, "Mail", $message, $headers);
  header( "Location: http://localhost/php/simple-mail.php" );
?>

We encourage you to replace the value of the parameters used in the above example and test it.

Send mail in PHP with additional parameters

You can pass additional parameters as command line options to the program configured to be used while sending mail. Those said configurations are defined by the sendmail_path configuration. One example of using additional parameter is setting the envelope sender address with -f option.

<?php
mail('[email protected]', 'Demo mail', 'Testing mail communication', null,
   '-f [email protected]');
?>

We encourage you to replace the value of the parameters used in the above example and with your's and test it.

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