3 Sample PHP Scripts for Sending Emails

    RahulBy 3 Mins ReadUpdated:

    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 replacements like /var/qmail/bin/sendmail for Qmail.

    In this article, you will learn 3 methods of sending emails using sample PHP scripts.

    1. Simple PHP script for sending emails
    2. Send email using PHP with HTML format
    3. Sending emails using PHP via remote SMTP server

    1. Simple PHP Script for Sending Emails

    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 purposes, $from_email with a sender email address.

    nano sendEmail.php

    Add the following sample PHP code for sending emails:

    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10
    11
    12
    <?php
       $to_email = "[email protected]";
       $subject = "Simple Email Test via PHP";
       $body = "Hi,\n This is test email send by PHP Script";
       $headers = "From: [email protected]";
     
       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 in HTML Format

    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
    PHP email() function example
    A sample web form for sending email with 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.

    3. Sending Emails using PHP via Remote SMTP Server

    You can also use a remote SMTP server for sending emails using PHP applications. In order to use these options, you must have remote SMTP server access like Gmail, Amazon SES, Sendgrid, etc. We will use the PHPMailer module in PHP script for sending emails via a remote SMTP server.

    First of all, You need to Install the phpmailer module using composer under your application.

    composer require phpmailer/phpmailer

    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
    28
    29
    30
    31
    32
    33
    34
    35
    36
    37
    38
    39
    <?php
     
    use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
    use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
    require 'vendor/autoload.php';
     
    $mail = new PHPMailer(true);
    try {
        //Server settings
        // $mail->SMTPDebug = 2; //Uncomment to view debug log
        $mail->isSMTP();
        $mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
        $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
        $mail->Username = '[email protected]';
        $mail->Password = '_password_';
        $mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
        $mail->Port = 587;
     
        $mail->setFrom('[email protected]', 'Admin');
        $mail->addAddress('[email protected]', 'Recipient1');
        $mail->addAddress('[email protected]');
        $mail->addReplyTo('[email protected]', 'noreply');
        $mail->addCC('[email protected]');
        $mail->addBCC('[email protected]');
     
        //Attachments
        $mail->addAttachment('/backup/test.log');
     
        //Content
        $mail->isHTML(true);
        $mail->Subject = 'Mail Subject Here!';
        $mail->Body    = 'Mail body content goes here';
     
        $mail->send();
        echo 'Message has been sent';
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        echo 'Message could not be sent.';
        echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
    }

    Conclusion

    In this tutorial, You have learned 3 methods of sending emails via PHP scripts. You can get more information about PHP mail() function from its official website.

    Share.

    Related Posts

    12 Comments

    1. shoji on

      Stop provide insecure email sending, whoever gonna use this it will be easily hackable. at least show them how to escape or stop giving vulnerable code

      Reply
    10. Noel Springer on

      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

      Reply

    Leave A Reply