TalkPHP - My first Tutorial (PHP Mail())

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My first Tutorial (PHP Mail())

Well first of all I would like to say thanks for viewing my first tutorial on your board. This tutorial was requested by " Danny Needs Help".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danny Needs Help

Form Processing/Mailing would be a good first tutorial :).

Now here we go. If you have problems understanding the tutorial please ask and I will correct the wording and help you with your problem. Now first of all there are more then just mail() to do your online eMailing. But if you just want to send eMail to someone this is the easiest way. So here we go.

First of all I think for such a easy script I will display a small sample code of the function in use and tell you how it works.

PHP Code:


		
			
<?php



$to = "Somone@domain.ext";

$subject = "My new mail() code!";

$body = "This message was made by my new mail() code!";

$from = "Bill@Microsoft.com";



mail($to, $subject, $body, "From: $from);



?>

Now first of all you are wondering how does this work? Well mail() is a function and it had 4 places for data. What address to send it to, the subject of the eMail, the body of the eMail, & the headers. Now you are probably thinking where is the place to put who it's from and where do I put my username and password for my eMail account. Well first of all... you can pick who its from using the header part of mail(). You can use anyones eMail you want just pop it in and it sends it. Then when they click reply it replys to that eMail. Your probley thinking awesome! Now you HAVE to have From: in front of the header so it knows what Bill@Microsoft.com or whatever you used is for. Or its going to think ok this isn't a header "ERROR!!!". Now everything else is pretty much easy. To format a eMail you can either use HTML or to make sure its safe since some eMail clients don't use HTML you can put: \n for breaking lines .ect you would have to learn more about normal text formatting. Now I hope that teaches you but one more thing you might want to know... How to send to more then 1 person? Well do this:

PHP Code:


		
			
<?php



$to  = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';

$to .= 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';

$to .= 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';

$to .= 'blah@blah.ext';

$subject = "My new mail() code!';

$body = "This message was made by my new mail() code!";

$from = "Bill@Microsoft.com";



mail($to, $subject, $body, "From: $from");



?>

Now just replace the: blah@blah.ext with a eMail. now that sends the eMail to blah@blah.ext 4 times! I hope you get that. Please let me know if you don't get this. Thanks! also... http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php is a good reference. All of those advanced programers that think this is a stupid tutorial. It's not made for you. It's made for users that want to make a simple feedback or just a way to eMail people when they sign up the site. Oh and if you wanna feel special and at bottom be like your IP address is logged you can just add $REMOTE_ADDR somewhere in the body. That variable will print there IP address. Thanks for viewing the tutorial and hope it helps.

Great tutorial and thanks for detailed content.

$subject = "My new mail() code!';

You used quotations, then an apostraphe :). Excellent tutorial though.

Thanks and the subject thing was fixed.

Woahh! Great tutorial, Im getting ideas now, Im going to make a mailng system, were it gets the emails out of the database, and sends to everyone. Cheers for the tutorial is going to help me out alot.

Nice tutorial and very detailed, Thanks

that's really good for your first tutorial! :)

Keep up the good work :)

maybe ive missed something but i belive that

$to = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to .= 'blah@blah.ext';

these variables are wrong your only continuing the last 2 (since the 3rd one will overwrite the previous two)

i think it should be

$to = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to .= 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to .= 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to .= 'blah@blah.ext';

then it will foward onto all 4

This is a very nice detailed tutorial, thanks for sharing with us William.

Great Tutorial. Good job William!

Pretty nice. With a few additions and some post comments from another page, you can make a Mass E-mailer :)

Three things.

1. As adam said :

$to = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to .= 'blah@blah.ext';
should be
$to = 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to .= 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to .= 'blah@blah.ext' . ', ';
$to .= 'blah@blah.ext';

2. From variable breakup
Instead of using
$headers = "From: Bill@Microsoft.com";
with
mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);

you should use (for more flexibility)
$from = "Bill.Gates@M$hit.com";
mail($to, $subject, $body, From: $headers);

The variable name 'headers' is mis-leading as a header can contain any amount of information from a vast range of categories ;).

3. Pretty nice. With a few additions and some post comments from another page, you can make a Mass E-mailer

- I decided to write a E-Mail Script. If you use it then please give credit to Omar Al-Kurd (me).
- The script i wrote is 1 page, name can be anything and it is self-sufficient/maintaing.
- If people like it alot, i may evolve it into a mailing list type thing ;).

email.php

PHP Code:


		
			
Hmm... deleted the script >.< I'll make it again pretty soon.

Dear All,

Thank you for all the comments. I have fixed the . part I am very sorry for not seeing that. Also about the headers thing. Your right there are tons of headers so if there is a varible called headers. Why would you wanna put: From: $headers then all the headers are going to be from. That is why I put $headers and added From: blah. So people could add more headers. If you have any comments let me know.

-William Key

Hmmm... I just relized that my script that i made may not be faulty at all but rather a problem with PHP 4.3.10 (look at the change log under 4.3.11) so i will open my script up again :).

Very good example. However, just for constructive criticism, I would do this instead:

PHP Code:


		
			
$emails = array("email1@aol.com","email2@aol.com","email3@aol.com");

$subject = "Hello";

$body = "Message Here";

$headers = "From: Billy";



foreach($emails as $e) {

  if(!mail($e,$subject,$body,$from)) {

    die("Error in sending mail);

  }

}

This way, if you do choose to send it to many people, spam blockers won't interpret the huge mailing list as a spam email. You can also use the last argument in many different ways other than "From". Based on the smtp protocol, you can do much more with it. see http://php.net/mail for more information.

William,

Thanks for the great tutorial, and sharing it with us! I will try it out.

Zeromancer,

Thanks for pointing that out to us.

Cheers,
Nagaki

For very large e-mail sendning quantitys you should use a email class like php mailer. http://phpmailer.codeworxtech.com/

Because as i understand the mail() function opens a connection and closes it on every call. That might be of server load concern later on.

But i guess a few hundred emails is going the be allright but one would have to see. Optionally you could work in a cue system of some sort to keep the load down, maybe a delay between loops or something. Otherwise a email class would be good.

/EyeDentify

Quote:

Originally Posted by EyeDentify (Post 4583)

I didn't realise that the mail function behaved in that way, but I have noticed its performance to be rather inadequate for large batches of emails, as you say.

Quote from phpmailer's website:

Quote:

As you may know, it is simply to send mails with the PHP mail() function. So why use PHPMailer? Isn't it slower? Yes that's true, but PHPMailer makes it easy to send e-mail

Sticking with the standard mail(); way is the best. Just have a good mail server.

Some people wish to implement a layout or maybe a little bit more detailed header information. Go to php.net/mail for more. ;) I like to use the user contributed content to mod my own script to my likings.