PHP sendmail

webguync · December 22, 2010

I am getting an error on a form which sends an email if the form is succesfull. I think there may ne an issue with the sendmail function. I am using a hosting company and not sure if sendmail is something that has to be enabled in the .ini file. Is there any way to check without getting the hosting company involved?

Rifts · December 22, 2010

post code

webguync · December 22, 2010

<?php

//Retrieve form data. 
//GET - user submitted data using AJAX
//POST - in case user does not support javascript, we'll use POST instead
$name = ($_GET['name']) ? $_GET['name'] : $_POST['name'];
$email = ($_GET['email']) ?$_GET['email'] : $_POST['email'];
$website = ($_GET['website']) ?$_GET['website'] : $_POST['website'];
$comment = ($_GET['comment']) ?$_GET['comment'] : $_POST['comment'];

//flag to indicate which method it uses. If POST set it to 1
if ($_POST) $post=1;

//Simple server side validation for POST data, of course, you should validate the email
if (!$name) $errors[count($errors)] = 'Please enter your name.';
if (!$email) $errors[count($errors)] = 'Please enter your email.'; 
if (!$comment) $errors[count($errors)] = 'Please enter your comment.'; 

//if the errors array is empty, send the mail
if (!$errors) {

//recipient
$to = 'your name <email@gmail.com>';	
//sender
$from = $name . ' <' . $email . '>';

//subject and the html message
$subject = 'Comment from ' . $name;	
$message = '
<!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></head>
<body>
<table>
	<tr><td>Name</td><td>' . $name . '</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Email</td><td>' . $email . '</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Website</td><td>' . $website . '</td></tr>
	<tr><td>Comment</td><td>' . nl2br($comment) . '</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>';

//send the mail
$result = sendmail($to, $subject, $message, $from);

//if POST was used, display the message straight away
if ($_POST) {
	if ($result) echo 'Thank you! We have received your message.';
	else echo 'Sorry, unexpected error. Please try again later';

//else if GET was used, return the boolean value so that 
//ajax script can react accordingly
//1 means success, 0 means failed
} else {
	echo $result;	
}

//if the errors array has values
} else {
//display the errors message
for ($i=0; $i<count($errors); $i++) echo $errors[$i] . '<br/>';
echo '<a href="form.php">Back</a>';
exit;
}


//Simple mail function with HTML header
function sendmail($to, $subject, $message, $from) {
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: ' . $from . "\r\n";

$result = mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

if ($result) return 1;
else return 0;
}

?>

webguync · December 22, 2010

see anything wrong with the code? I was thinking may mail() wasn't enabled by the hosting company. Would it show up in PHP Info? I didn't see anything, but here is the info on what PHP is running.

http://www.inspired-evolution.com/PHP_info.php

PFMaBiSmAd · December 22, 2010

I am getting an error ...

Care to tell someone what error that was so they know where to start looking at?

Rifts · December 22, 2010

if I were you I would make a separate page and make the simplest possible mail script and see if that works

something like

<?php

$to =

$subject =

$message =

mail($to, $subject, $message);

?>

webguync · December 22, 2010

sorry, I just get the else echo, not a PHP error

else echo 'Sorry, unexpected error. Please try again later';

how would I set the simple script to go to a specific email, because I think the email I have through the hosting company is not one that I typically use.

Rifts · December 22, 2010

make a page called test_email.php

type this in

<?php

$to = 'youremail can be yahoo, gmail, it doesnt matter'

$subject = 'this is a test'

$message = 'I rock at the phps'

mail($to, $subject, $message);

?>

save and upload it

go to http://www.yoursite.com/test_email.php

check email

webguync · December 22, 2010

hmm, what is wrong with this code?

<?php
$to = 'myemail@gmail.com'
$subject = 'this is a test'
$message = 'I rock at the phps'
mail($to, $subject, $message);
?>

getting a 'Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in \test.php on line 3'

webguync · December 22, 2010

ooops nevermind. left out the ; on three lines.

ok, that did work.

Rifts · December 22, 2010

ok well good now you know your server can use mail();

webguync · December 22, 2010

yep, I do know that now thanks. Still not sure why my form won't post though.

Rifts · December 22, 2010

$result = sendmail($to, $subject, $message, $from);

shouldnt that be

$result = mail($to, $subject, $message, $from);

BlueSkyIS · December 22, 2010

http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

PFMaBiSmAd · December 22, 2010

The most apparent problem in your full code that does not work is that you are putting the email address that was entered into the From: header. You need to put an email address hosted at the sending mail server into the From: header and you can put any entered email address into the Reply-to: header.

To find if there are any php errors returned by the mail() function call, set error_reporting to E_ALL (or a -1) and display_errors to ON -

ini_set("display_errors", "1");
error_reporting(-1);

webguync · December 22, 2010

do you mean in the function?

function mail($to, $subject, $message, $from) {
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: ' . $from . "\r\n";

$result = mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

if ($result) return 1;
else return 0;
}

not really sure I am understanding what to change. I added the error reporting, and not getting any errors.

webguync · December 23, 2010

update, when I did the test sendmail, I got the email it came from and changed the header to this.

$headers .= "webguync@inspired-evolution.com" . "\r\n";

and the form still doesn't send.

webguync · December 23, 2010

any more ideas on why this isn't working or how I can debug?

BlueSkyIS · December 23, 2010

when i try to parse that function, i get a parse error: Fatal error: Cannot redeclare mail()

and inside that mail() function, you call mail(), thereby having the function call itself.

long story short: you should probably name your function something besides an existing PHP function name.

webguync · December 23, 2010

shouldn't this work? or is sendmail() the same as mail()?

function sendmail($to, $subject, $message, $from) {
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "webguync@inspired-evolution.com" . "\r\n";


$result = sendmail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

if ($result) return 1;
else return 0;
}

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PHP sendmail

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