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# mail

(PHP 3, PHP 4 , PHP 5)

mail -- Send mail

## Description

bool mail ( string to, string subject, string message [, string additional_headers [, string additional_parameters]])

mail() automatically mails the message specified in message to the receiver specified in to. Multiple recipients can be specified by putting a comma between each address in to. Email with attachments and special types of content can be sent using this function. This is accomplished via MIME-encoding - for more information, see this Zend article or the PEAR Mime Classes.

The following RFC's may also be useful: RFC 1896, RFC 2045, RFC 2046, RFC 2047, RFC 2048, and RFC 2049.

mail() returns `TRUE` if the mail was successfully accepted for delivery, `FALSE` otherwise.

Warning

The Windows implementation of mail() differs in many ways from the Unix implementation. First, it doesn't use a local binary for composing messages but only operates on direct sockets which means a MTA is needed listening on a network socket (which can either on the localhost or a remote machine). 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. PHP < 4.3 only supported the Cc: header element (and was case-sensitive). PHP >= 4.3 supports all the mentioned header elements and is no longer case-sensitive.

Example 1. Sending mail.

`<?php mail("joecool@example.com", "My Subject", "Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3"); ?>`

If a fourth string argument is passed, this string is inserted at the end of the header. This is typically used to add extra headers. Multiple extra headers are separated with a carriage return and newline.

> Note: You must use \r\n to separate headers, although some Unix mail transfer agents may work with just a single newline (\n).

Example 2. Sending mail with extra headers.

`<?php mail("nobody@example.com", "the subject", $message, "From: webmaster@{$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']}\r\n" . "Reply-To: webmaster@{$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']}\r\n" . "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion()); ?>`

The additional_parameters parameter can be used to pass an additional parameter to the program configured to use when sending mail using the sendmail_path configuration setting. For example, this can be used to set the envelope sender address when using sendmail with the -f sendmail option. You may need to add the user that your web server runs as to your sendmail configuration to prevent a 'X-Warning' header from being added to the message when you set the envelope sender using this method.

Example 3. Sending mail with extra headers and setting an additional command line parameter.

`<?php mail("nobody@example.com", "the subject", $message, "From: webmaster@{$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']}", "-fwebmaster@{$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']}"); ?>`

> Note: This fifth parameter was added in PHP 4.0.5. Since PHP 4.2.3 this parameter is disabled in safe_mode and the mail() function will expose a warning message and return `FALSE` if you're trying to use it.

You can also use simple string building techniques to build complex email messages.

Example 4. Sending complex email.

`<?php
/* recipients */
$to = "mary@example.com" . ", " ; // note the comma
$to .= "kelly@example.com";
/* subject */
$subject = "Birthday Reminders for August";
/* message */
$message = '
<html>
<head>
<title>Birthday Reminders for August</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Here are the birthdays upcoming in August!</p>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Person</th><th>Day</th><th>Month</th><th>Year</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Joe</td><td>3rd</td><td>August</td><td>1970</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sally</td><td>17th</td><td>August</td><td>1973</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
';
/* To send HTML mail, you can set the Content-type header. */
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
/* additional headers */
$headers .= "To: Mary <mary@example.com>, Kelly <kelly@example.com>\r\n";
$headers .= "From: Birthday Reminder <birthday@example.com>\r\n";
$headers .= "Cc: birthdayarchive@example.com\r\n";
$headers .= "Bcc: birthdaycheck@example.com\r\n";
/* and now mail it */
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>`

> Note: Make sure you do not have any newline characters in the to or subject, or the mail may not be sent properly.

> Note: 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 (Particularly under Windows).

See also imap_mail().

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