The Basics

PHP provides a handy function for mailing from a server.  On a basic level, all you need to do is call the function mail with three parameters, which has the following syntax.

bool mail(string $to, string $subject, string $message [, string $headers][, string $additonal_params]]) 

These parameters are pretty straight forward.  Below is an example of how to send a very simple email message with no headers.

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$to = "example@wisc.edu"; $subject = "This is an example email."; $message = "Here is my message. Hopefully this email works!"; mail($to, $subject, $message);

Some notes about this basic usage:

• To specify a newline in the message, use the '\n' character.
• To specify multiple recipients, simply seperate each address by a comma in your $to string.
• Being able to mail from php requires that your sendmail properties are set in php.  Typically this is done for you -- if you are starting your own server, however, you may have to initialize these variables by yourself.

Using Headers

Of course, modern email messages consist of much more than a subject, message, and receiver.  We may want to specify who the message was from, the date, the organization responsible for the email, etc.  PHP uses the $header string to specify all of these fields and more.  Each line of the header field (seperated by a '\n' character) represents a single entry in the header.  The syntax for a header entry is simply:

<Header Field>: value of the field

Below is an example of making a header in php and then calling mail with this header.

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$header = "From: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>\n" .
      "To: The Receiver <receiver@example.com>\n" .
      "cc: Example Group <group@example.com>";
mail("john.doe@example.com", "Test Subject", "Hi\n\nHere is my message.", $header);

Some commonly used headers in PHP are:

Sending Attachments

Attaching a file in an email is something that is very common.  Unfortunately, attachments are not trivial in PHP.  A seperate article dedicated to this topic is currently in the works on The Tech Repo -- it will be linked here once it is completed.