sending emails in php

[perkeyone]

I made an address book in php and would like users to be able to send emails to their contacts from it. Here is one of my failed attempts.

<?php

$to = "_@_.com";
$subject = "Test mail";
$message = "Hello! This is a simple email message.";
$from = "_@_.com";
$headers = "";
$end="\n";

$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0".$end;
$headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-2".$end;
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit".$end;
$headers .= "X-Priority: 1".$end;
$headers .= "X-MSMail-Priority: High".$end;
$headers .= "From: ".$from.$end;
$headers .= "Reply-To: ".$from.$end;
$headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP/".phpversion().$end;
$headers .= "To: ".$to.$end;
$headers .= "Return-Path: ".$from.$end;
$headers .= "X-Sender: ".$from.$end;

if(mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers)){
	echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");}
else{
	echo("<p>Message delivery failed...</p>");}
echo "end of script";
?>

the script outputs "Message successfully sent!" but the emails never arrive. not even in the spam folder. ive done a lot of google'ing on the subject but have only confused myself even more. the solutions that i found ranged from changing the order of the headers to not using carriage return and newline. i also noticed people mentioning smtp and pear, neither of which i know how to use, nor do i know if they are required to send an email. anyways, im gonna keep searching.

 

[DrEvil]

something that stuck out to me was
$headers .= "From: $from".$end;
$headers .= "From: ".$from.$end;
should it be ?

I also want to know how to send emails using php so I will hang around for the answer(s)

If anyone I would suggest UndeadDragon because he uses it on his site x) IIRC

 

[perkeyone]

i coulda swore i caught that a while ago.
maybe with all the copy pasting ive done it got undone.
thanks, im testing it again right now but im not very hopeful.

EDIT: well it seems like there must be something else wrong with it as well.
im pretty sure gmail and yahoo both think it is spam

EDIT2: should i ask undead directly? or should i just hope he happens on this thread? lol

 

[UndeadDragon]

EDIT2: should i ask undead directly? or should i just hope he happens on this thread? lol

It's your lucky day

I use an extremely simply script on my website, but it gets the job done, so I'm not complaining. Here it is:

<?php
$name = $_POST['name'];
$from = $_POST['email'];
$message = $_POST['message'];

if($name != "" && $message != "") {
   $to = "[email protected]";
   $subject = "Contact - $name";
   $headers = "From: $from";
   mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );
   header( "location: contact.php?status=sent" );
}
else {
   header( "location: contact.php?status=error" );
}
?>

I'll be glad to help if you have any questions about it.

 

[GetTriggerUnit-]

A Dragon appears!

 

[Lyerae]

something that stuck out to me was

$headers .= "From: $from".$end; 
$headers .= "From: ".$from.$end;

should it be ?

Yes. The "$from" variable is inside a string, making it not a variable, but just some boring old text.

 

[Artificial]

Just FYI, PHP can have variables inside strings with double quotes (not single quotes).

<?php

$foo = 'cats';

echo "I have 2 $foo.\n"; # I have 2 cats.
echo 'I have 2 $foo.\n'; # I have 2 $foo.\n

?>

That's why the PHP highlighter highlights the variables inside such strings as variables.

 

[codemonkey]

It's recommended not use magic quotes (" ") when you don't have to for performance.

EG instead of:

echo "Hello $world";

use

echo 'Hello', $world;

 

[perkeyone]

no dice =[

<?php
$from = "[email protected]";
$message = "this is a test email";
$to = "my_work_email@google_partner_page.org";
$subject = "hurp derp";
$headers = "From: $from";
mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );
echo "sent";
?>

my work email never gets anything.

 

[UndeadDragon]

Which host do you use? It may be that their mail servers are not set up properly.

 

[perkeyone]

i honestly dont know,
that is likely something that my work has set up
ill ask my boss.

EDIT: well he told me that the university network that we use is probably firewalling it
apparently i can only send to school emails and accounts on the linux server here.
thanks for trying to help me out though. im sure ill be back

 

[Samuraid]

It's recommended not use magic quotes (" ")

Actually, embedding variables in quoted strings runs faster than concatenation.

 

[codemonkey]

Actually, embedding variables in quoted strings runs faster than concatenation.

Note that I didn't use concatenation sir, I passed multiple arguments to echo so it doesn't concatenate them it just outputs them both.

 

[Ghan]

I thought magic quotes was a PHP setting that has nothing to do with whether or not you use double quotes in your code if it's turned off (which is the recommended setting).

 

[Samuraid]

Note that I didn't use concatenation sir, I passed multiple arguments to echo so it doesn't concatenate them it just outputs them both.

Yes, but echo (while being the fastest) is very limited in its functionality, since it only provides a way to output text. You can capture the output of echo with an output buffer, which can provide a really quick way to concatenate a lot of strings, but for just concatenating two or three strings together and saving the result in a string, echo isn't necessarily the right tool.
I was speaking more generally with the suggestion to embed variables in strings.

I thought magic quotes was a PHP setting that has nothing to do with whether or not you use double quotes in your code if it's turned off (which is the recommended setting).

You are correct. magic_quotes is a (mis)feature of PHP that escapes input by automatically prefixing special characters with backslashes.

 

[perkeyone]

ah, i was wondering why it was doing that...

i had just learned about mysql injections and was trying to test out my project to see if it was vulnerable... but magic_quotes must have been turned on because all my form input was automatically changed.