A very simple tutorial to send an e-mail directly from a PHP script using the built-in mail() function. Great for processing forms or just to debug an application.

For sending more advanced e-mail, including HTML, we recommend the PHPMailer class, however, for sending a basic e-mail the easy way, we use this simple function provided by PHP.

The mail() function contains the following elements:

• Recipient e-mail address
• E-mail subject
• E-mail message
• Optional extras (from or reply-to e-mail address)

A basic email

The recipient of the e-mail can include just the e-mail address:

#recipient e-mail
$recipient = "name@domain.com";

You can also include a recipient name with the e-mail address using the following format:

#recipient name and e-mail
$recipient = "Name <name@domain.com>";

Separate multiple recipients with a comma. To insert line breaks into the e-mail message add “n” to insert a line break.

#e-mail subject
$subject = "Test E-mail";
#e-mail message
$message = "Hello,nnThis is a test e-mail";

Now we use the mail() function to send the e-mail.

#send the e-mail
mail($recipient, $subject, $message);

A more advanced e-mail

To insert additional information including the from and reply-to e-mail addresses we use headers.

#insert from and reply-to addresses
$header = "From: name@domain.com rn Reply-To: name@domain.com";
#send the e-mail
mail($recipient, $subject, $message, $header);

All done!

That’s all the code required to send an e-mail using the mail() function. For more information on any of the code featured above visit www.php.net for the online manual.

For more information on web development please contact us on +44(0)1202 315285 or info@acmultimedia.co.uk. Learn more about AC Multimedia.

PHP/MySQL Programming