PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is an easier programming language used for faster development. The PHP mail() function allows sending emails directly from a script. This function returns true for the successful delivery of email, otherwise returns false.
PHP mail() function uses sendmail_path value from ini file. For Unix systems the default value is used as /usr/sbin/sendmail or /usr/lib/sendmail. Systems not running with sendmail should set this directive to other mail replacement like /var/qmail/bin/sendmail for Qmail.
In this article, you will learn about sending emails using sample PHP scripts.
1. Sending Emails using PHP
Lets create a php file sendEmail.php in your web document root with following content. Change the $to_email with your recipient email address, $subject and $body as per your need, Keep as it is for testing purpose, $from_email with sender email address.
nano sendEmail.php
Add the following sample PHP code for sending email:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | <?php $subject = "Simple Email Test via PHP"; $body = "Hi,\n This is test email send by PHP Script"; if ( mail($to_email, $subject, $body, $headers)) { echo("Email successfully sent to $to_email..."); } else { echo("Email sending failed..."); } ?> |
Now we can test it by access in a web browser or simply execute it from the command line like below.
php sendEmail.php
Output:Email successfully sent to [email protected]
2. Send Email using PHP with HTML Form
In the previous example, we executed the PHP script via the command line. Let’s try another example to create a web form and send an email with a PHP script.
Assuming you already have a website hosted on a server enabled with PHP. Create a PHP script sendEmail.php under the website document root of your domain with following content. This will show a simple form in the browser, using that we can also send an email for testing purposes.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 | <?php if (!isset($_POST["submit"])) { ?> <form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"];?>"> To: <input type="text" name="to_email"><br> From: <input type="text" name="from_email"><br> Subject: <input type="text" name="subject"><br> Message: <textarea rows="10" cols="20" name="message"></textarea><br> <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Send Email"> </form> <?php } else { if (isset($_POST["to_email"])) { $to_email = $_POST["to_email"]; $from_email = $_POST["from_email"]; $subject = $_POST["subject"]; $body = $_POST["message"]; if ( mail($to_email, $subject, $body, $headers)) { echo("Email successfully sent to $to_email..."); } else { echo("Email sending failed..."); } } } ?> |
Now access sendEmail.php in the web browser
http://localhost/sendEmail.php
A form will be displayed with input fields. Fill in all the fields and hit the Send Email button to submit the form. On submission, the PHP script added in the form will send the email.
You can get more information about PHP mail() function from its official website.
10 Comments
Hi. How do l make my submit button to work? How do l write the php and can l write the php code inside my index.html file? I have my hosting and domain with namecheap.
how to send mail from localhost without using FTP server in php
no you cant send email on localhost
Thanks please post how to send email using google SMTP.
thanks, it really worked
didnt work AT ALL where u tested it??
Thanks for this script. It works fine
thanks for the sugestion
Thanks please post how to send email using google SMTP.
Hi Rahul,
Should the line endings in the script be “\r\n” ?
Also, on Debian 9 with php-mail installed to provide PEAR’s Mail:: package how would this be used to send SMTP email?
Cheers,
Noel