mail

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

mail — 发送邮件

说明

mail ( string $to , string $subject , string $message , string $additional_headers = ? , string $additional_parameters = ? ) : bool

发送一封电子邮件。

参数

to

电子邮件收件人，或收件人列表。

本字符串的格式必须符合 » RFC 2822。例如：

  • user@example.com
  • user@example.com, anotheruser@example.com
  • User <user@example.com>
  • User <user@example.com>, Another User <anotheruser@example.com>

subject

电子邮件的主题。

Caution

本项不能包含任何换行符，否则邮件可能无法正确发送。

message

所要发送的消息。

行之间必须以一个 LF（\n）分隔。每行不能超过 70 个字符。

Caution

（Windows 下）当 PHP 直接连接到 SMTP 服务器时，如果在一行开头发现一个句号，则会被删掉。要避免此问题，将单个句号替换成两个句号。

<?php
$text = str_replace("\n.", "\n..", $text);
?>

additional_headers（可选项）

String to be inserted at the end of the email header.

This is typically used to add extra headers (From, Cc, and Bcc). Multiple extra headers should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n).

Note:

When sending mail, the mail must contain a From header. This can be set with the additional_headers parameter, or a default can be set in php.ini.

Failing to do this will result in an error message similar to Warning: mail(): "sendmail_from" not set in php.ini or custom "From:" header missing.

Note:

If messages are not received, try using a LF (\n) only. Some poor quality Unix mail transfer agents replace LF by CRLF automatically (which leads to doubling CR if CRLF is used). This should be a last resort, as it does not comply with » RFC 2822.

additional_parameters (optional)

The additional_parameters parameter can be used to pass an additional parameter to the program configured to use when sending mail using the sendmail_path configuration setting. For example, this can be used to set the envelope sender address when using sendmail with the -f sendmail option.

The user that the webserver runs as should be added as a trusted user to the sendmail configuration to prevent a 'X-Warning' header from being added to the message when the envelope sender (-f) is set using this method. For sendmail users, this file is /etc/mail/trusted-users.

返回值

Returns true if the mail was successfully accepted for delivery, false otherwise.

It is important to note that just because the mail was accepted for delivery, it does NOT mean the mail will actually reach the intended destination.

更新日志

版本 说明
7.2.0 现在 additional_headers 参数开始支持 array。

范例

Example #1 Sending mail.

Using mail() to send a simple email:

<?php
// The message
$message = "Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3";

// In case any of our lines are larger than 70 characters, we should use wordwrap()
$message = wordwrap($message, 70);

// Send
mail('caffinated@example.com', 'My Subject', $message);
?>

Example #2 Sending mail with extra headers.

The addition of basic headers, telling the MUA the From and Reply-To addresses:

<?php
$to      = 'nobody@example.com';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
    'Reply-To: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
    'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();

mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

Example #3 Sending mail with an additional command line parameter.

The additional_parameters parameter can be used to pass an additional parameter to the program configured to use when sending mail using the sendmail_path.

<?php
mail('nobody@example.com', 'the subject', 'the message', null,
   '-fwebmaster@example.com');
?>

Example #4 Sending HTML email

It is also possible to send HTML email with mail().

<?php
// multiple recipients
$to  = 'aidan@example.com' . ', '; // note the comma
$to .= 'wez@example.com';

// subject
$subject = 'Birthday Reminders for August';

// message
$message = '
<html>
<head>
  <title>Birthday Reminders for August</title>
</head>
<body>
  <p>Here are the birthdays upcoming in August!</p>
  <table>
    <tr>
      <th>Person</th><th>Day</th><th>Month</th><th>Year</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Joe</td><td>3rd</td><td>August</td><td>1970</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Sally</td><td>17th</td><td>August</td><td>1973</td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</body>
</html>
';

// To send HTML mail, the Content-type header must be set
$headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";

// Additional headers
$headers .= 'To: Mary <mary@example.com>, Kelly <kelly@example.com>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: Birthday Reminder <birthday@example.com>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Cc: birthdayarchive@example.com' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Bcc: birthdaycheck@example.com' . "\r\n";

// Mail it
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

Note:

If intending to send HTML or otherwise Complex mails, it is recommended to use the PEAR package » PEAR::Mail.

注释

Note:

The Windows implementation of mail() differs in many ways from the Unix implementation. First, it doesn't use a local binary for composing messages but only operates on direct sockets which means a MTA is needed listening on a network socket (which can either on the localhost or a remote machine).

Second, the custom headers like From:, Cc:, Bcc: and Date: are not interpreted by the MTA in the first place, but are parsed by PHP.

As such, the to parameter should not be an address in the form of "Something <someone@example.com>". The mail command may not parse this properly while talking with the MTA.

Note:

It is worth noting that the mail() function is not suitable for larger volumes of email in a loop. This function opens and closes an SMTP socket for each email, which is not very efficient.

For the sending of large amounts of email, see the » PEAR::Mail, and » PEAR::Mail_Queue packages.

Note:

The following RFCs may be useful: » RFC 1896, » RFC 2045, » RFC 2046, » RFC 2047, » RFC 2048, » RFC 2049, and » RFC 2822.

参见

User Contributed Notes

atesin () gmial ! com 12-Aug-2021 08:07
HOW PHP MAIL() WORKS INTERNALLY, more or less, according some tests i did

imagine php is running with uid 33 when reaches a mail() function like this

---- /my/htdocs/mailer-script.php line 69 ----
$was_sent = mail(
  'Alice <alice@wonder.land>, white-rabbit@endless.cave',
  'Invitation',
  "Hi, you are cordially invited to drink a cup of tea at my house\ntomorrow at sunset",
  "Some-Header: foo\r\nOther-Header: bar", // can also be an associative array of 'Header' => 'Value'
  'param1 param2');
----

then look for ini options like this (all optional, on any operating system)

---- ini options ----
; path to mail sender command + arguments, if omitted will defaults to NULL
sendmail_path = '/bin/sendmail-esque arg1 arg2'
; the From header, can be also set in sendmail but make sure it SENDS ONE
sendmail_from = 'Mad Hatter <hatter@house.forest>'
; recommended to not being blind, look at file permissions
mail.log = '/var/log/php/mail.log'
; adds an originating script header to send php mail internals (security sensitive)
mail.add_x_header = on
; outgoing mail server address, if omitted will defaults to "localhost"
;SMTP = 'localhost'
; server tcp port, if omitted will defaults to port 25
;smtp_port = 25
----

then craft a message like this (please avoid duplicated headers)

---- mail message ----
From: Mad Hatter <hatter@house.forest>
To: Alice <alice@wonder.land>, white-rabbit@endless.cave
Subject: Invitation
Some-Header: foo
Other-Header: bar
X-PHP-Originating-Script: 33:mailer-script.php

Hi, you are cordially invited to drink a cup of tea at my house
tomorrow at sunset
----

then APPEND this log line

---- /var/log/php/mail.log ----
[<date> <time> <zone>] mail() on [/my/htdocs/mailer-script.php:69]: <all headers joined...>
----

THEN IF (sendmail_path is not empty, AND file is found, AND has +rx permissions):

- craft and run this shell command

---- shell ----
/bin/sendmail-esque arg1 arg2 param1 param2
----

- send the crafted message to its standard input
- wait the program to exit
- pass last exit code to mail() return

OR ELSE (i.e. sendmail bin not run) (not sure about these):

- try to internally open an smtp connection (with fsockopen()?)
- send the message directly and wait for connection to close
- pass last socket status to mail() return
marcrbarker at NOSPAMgmail dot com 02-Dec-2020 12:03
DKIM signature can break by trying to add <HTML tag> text effects where plain text is expected:

.
.
.
$headers[] = 'MIME-Version: 1.0';
$headers[] = 'Content-Type: text/html; utf-8';
$headers[] = 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable';

// *** This will break DKIM ***
$message = '<span style="color:green;font-size:24px;">ThisIsColored</span>'
// *** This had broke DKIM ***

mail($email, $subject, $message, implode("\r\n", $headers));
.
.
.
John dot php at yaph dot org dot uk 07-Nov-2020 07:37
I found I needed to use the additional parameter -f$envelope_sender to send subscribe messages to my email list manager (Enemies of Carlotta, YMMV). Simply setting From: email@address.tld in additional headers wasn't sufficient.

So to subscribe to mylist@example.com via a PHP script I call
mail("mylist-subscribe@example.com", $emailSubject, $body, '', "-f$email_to_subscribe");
pangz dot lab at gmail dot com 06-Jul-2020 08:42
* Sending email with attachment

function sendMail(
    string $fileAttachment,
    string $mailMessage = MAIL_CONF["mailMessage"],
    string $subject     = MAIL_CONF["subject"],
    string $toAddress   = MAIL_CONF["toAddress"],
    string $fromMail    = MAIL_CONF["fromMail"]
): bool {
   
    $fileAttachment = trim($fileAttachment);
    $from           = $fromMail;
    $pathInfo       = pathinfo($fileAttachment);
    $attchmentName  = "attachment_".date("YmdHms").(
    (isset($pathInfo['extension']))? ".".$pathInfo['extension'] : ""
    );
   
    $attachment    = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents($fileAttachment)));
    $boundary      = "PHP-mixed-".md5(time());
    $boundWithPre  = "\n--".$boundary;
   
    $headers   = "From: $from";
    $headers  .= "\nReply-To: $from";
    $headers  .= "\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$boundary."\"";
   
    $message   = $boundWithPre;
    $message  .= "\n Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=gb2312\n";
    $message  .= "\n $mailMessage";
   
    $message .= $boundWithPre;
    $message .= "\nContent-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"".$attchmentName."\"";
    $message .= "\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n";
    $message .= "\nContent-Disposition: attachment\n";
    $message .= $attachment;
    $message .= $boundWithPre."--";
   
    return mail($toAddress, $subject, $message, $headers);
}

* Sending email in html

function sendHtmlMail(
    string $mailMessage = MAIL_CONF["mailMessage"],
    string $subject     = MAIL_CONF["subject"],
    array $toAddress    = MAIL_CONF["toAddress"],
    string $fromMail    = MAIL_CONF["fromMail"]
): bool {
   
    $to        = implode(",", $toAddress);
    $headers[] = 'MIME-Version: 1.0';
    $headers[] = 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1';   
    $headers[] = 'To: '.$to;
    $headers[] = 'From: '.$fromMail;   

    return mail($to, $subject, $mailMessage, implode("\r\n", $headers));
}
jerold at pangzlab dot com 10-Feb-2020 05:47
Sending mail with attachments

function sendMail(
    $mailTo,
    $message,
    $subject    = "Your Subject",
    $fromMail   = "your@emialaddress.com",
    $fromName   = "from sender",
    $replyTo    = "no-reply",
    $filePath   = "path"
)
{
    $LE  = "\r\n";
    $uid = md5(uniqid(time()));
    $withAttachment = ($filePath !== NULL && file_exists($filePath));

    if($withAttachment){
        $fileName   = basename($filePath);
        $fileSize   = filesize($filePath);
        $handle     = fopen($filePath, "r");
        $content    = fread($handle, $fileSize);
        fclose($handle);
        $content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
    }

    $header = "From: ".$fromName." <".$fromMail.">$LE";
    $header .= "Reply-To: ".$replyTo."$LE";
    $header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0$LE";
    $header .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$uid."\"$LE$LE";
    $header .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.$LE";
    $header .= "--".$uid."$LE";
    $header .= "Content-type:text/html; CHARSET=gb2312$LE";
    $header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit$LE$LE";
    $header .= $message."$LE$LE";

    if($withAttachment){
        $header .= "--".$uid."$LE";
        $header .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"".$fileName."\"$LE";
        $header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64$LE";
        $header .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$fileName."\"$LE$LE";
        $header .= $content."$LE$LE";
        $header .= "--".$uid."--";
    }
    return mail($mailTo, $subject, "", $header);
}
Anonymous 12-Oct-2019 07:36
If you notice wrong displayed characters in the email it's because you need to properly set the Content-Type and the Charset in the headers of the email:

<?php
$headers = 'Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=gb2312' . "\r\n";
?>

Mostly, UTF-8 is your best choice.

You can set custom headers with the fourth parameter of the mail() function.

To make the whole thing waterproof, add the following header too:

<?php
$headers .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64' . "\r\n";
?>

Now you can use the combination of UTF-8 and Base64 to properly encode the subject line and the recipient name like this:

<?php
$subject = '=?UTF-8?B?' . base64_encode('Test email with German Umlauts ??ü?') . '?=';
$recipient = '=?UTF-8?B?' . base64_encode('Margret Müller') . '?= <recipient@domain.com>';
?>

And don't forget to Base64 encode the email message too:

<?php
$message = base64_encode('This email contains German Umlauts ??ü?.');
?>

All references are taken from:
https://dev.to/lutvit/how-to-make-the-php-mail-function-awesome-3cii
Mark Simon 05-Jul-2019 07:04
It is worth noting that you can set up a fake sendmail program using the sendmail_path directive in php.ini.

Despite the comment in that file, sendmail_path also works for Window. From https://www.php.net/manual/en/mail.configuration.php#ini.sendmail-path:

This directive works also under Windows. If set, smtp, smtp_port and sendmail_from are ignored and the specified command is executed.
charles dot fisher at arconic dot com 10-Nov-2017 07:34
I migrated an application to a platform without a local transport agent (MTA). I did not want to configure an MTA, so I wrote this xxmail function to replace mail() with calls to a remote SMTP server. Hopefully it is of some use.

function xxmail($to, $subject, $body, $headers)
{
 $smtp = stream_socket_client('tcp://smtp.yourmail.com:25', $eno, $estr, 30);

 $B = 8192;
 $c = "\r\n";
 $s = 'myapp@someserver.com';

 fwrite($smtp, 'helo ' . $_ENV['HOSTNAME'] . $c);
  $junk = fgets($smtp, $B);

 // Envelope
 fwrite($smtp, 'mail from: ' . $s . $c);
  $junk = fgets($smtp, $B);
 fwrite($smtp, 'rcpt to: ' . $to . $c);
  $junk = fgets($smtp, $B);
 fwrite($smtp, 'data' . $c);
  $junk = fgets($smtp, $B);

 // Header
 fwrite($smtp, 'To: ' . $to . $c);
 if(strlen($subject)) fwrite($smtp, 'Subject: ' . $subject . $c);
 if(strlen($headers)) fwrite($smtp, $headers); // Must be \r\n (delimited)
 fwrite($smtp, $headers . $c);

 // Body
 if(strlen($body)) fwrite($smtp, $body . $c);
 fwrite($smtp, $c . '.' . $c);
  $junk = fgets($smtp, $B);

 // Close
 fwrite($smtp, 'quit' . $c);
  $junk = fgets($smtp, $B);
 fclose($smtp);
}
eeeugeneee 21-Jul-2017 01:39
Send mail with minimal requirements from email services.

<?php
    $encoding = "utf-8";

    // Preferences for Subject field
    $subject_preferences = array(
        "input-charset" => $encoding,
        "output-charset" => $encoding,
        "line-length" => 76,
        "line-break-chars" => "\r\n"
    );

    // Mail header
    $header = "Content-type: text/html; charset=".$encoding." \r\n";
    $header .= "From: ".$from_name." <".$from_mail."> \r\n";
    $header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0 \r\n";
    $header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit \r\n";
    $header .= "Date: ".date("r (T)")." \r\n";
    $header .= iconv_mime_encode("Subject", $mail_subject, $subject_preferences);

    // Send mail
    mail($mail_to, $mail_subject, $mail_message, $header);
?>
php at simoneast dot net 31-May-2017 05:19
Often it's helpful to find the exact error message that is triggered by the mail() function. While the function doesn't provide an error directly, you can use error_get_last() when mail() returns false.

<?php
$success = mail('example@example.com', 'My Subject', $message);
if (!$success) {
    $errorMessage = error_get_last()['message'];
}
?>

(Tested successfully on Windows which uses SMTP by default, but sendmail on Linux/OSX may not provide the same level of detail.)

Thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/a/20203870/195835
chris at ocproducts dot com 26-Apr-2017 10:15
Correction to my earlier note:

'"\n" is confirmed required for qmail and postfix, probably also for sendmail and exim but I have not tested.'

It only affects qmail.
chris at ocproducts dot com 26-Apr-2017 10:04
The 'sendmail' executable which PHP uses on Linux/Mac (not Windows) expects "\n" as a line separator.

This executable is a standard, and emulated by other MTAs.

"\n" is confirmed required for qmail and postfix, probably also for sendmail and exim but I have not tested.

If you pass through using "\r\n" as a separator it may appear to work, but your email will be subtly corrupted and some middleware may break. It only works because some systems will clean up your mistake.

If you are implementing DKIM be very careful, as DKIM checks will fail (at least on popular validation tools) if you screw this up. DKIM must be calculated using "\r\n" but then you must switch it all to "\n" when using the PHP mail function.

On Windows, however, you should use "\r\n" because PHP is using SMTP in this situation, and hence the normal rules of the SMTP protocol (not the normal rules of Unix piping) apply.
Anonymous 14-Dec-2016 10:18
Security advice: Although it is not documented, for the parameters $to and $subject the mail() function changes at least \r and \n to space. So these parameters are safe against injection of additional headers. But you might want to check $to for commas as these separate multiple addresses and you might not want to send to more than one recipient.

The crucial part is the $additional_headers parameter. This parameter can't be cleaned by the mail() function. So it is up to you to prevent unwanted \r or \n to be inserted into the values you put in there. Otherwise you just created a potential spam distributor.
jim at jimbrooking dot net 06-Jan-2016 04:17
I recently changed hosting companies and spent a day trying to see why an email script that had been working for years failed on the new server.

The answer was that the old hosting company's email server accepted multiple "CC:" lines in the additional headers string, and the new did not. Thus on the new server

...
$add_hdr .= "CC: " . $email1 . PHP_EOL;
$add_hdr .= "CC: " . $email2 . PHP_EOL;
...

did not work, but

...
$add_hdr .= "CC: " . $email1 . ", " . $email2 . PHP_EOL;
...

did work.

In both cases, PHP's mail() function returned no error, but until I placed both emails, comma-separated, in the same line I was getting the following error:

550 Messages should have one or no Cc headers, not 2.

Hope this helps someone.
jimmytrojan009 at gmail dot com 26-Oct-2015 06:05
I have tried many online tutorials to get mail() function working in windows, until i stumbled upon this website
http://php.codeindepth.com/php-sending-mail/

It really boils down to changing few directives in php.ini and sendmail.ini

Changes required in sendmail.ini

smtp_server=smtp.gmail.com
smtp_port=587
error_logfile=error.log
debug_logfile=debug.log
auth_username=your-gmail-id@gmail.com
auth_password=your-gmail-password
force_sender=your-gmail-id@gmail.com

Changes required in php.ini

SMTP=smtp.gmail.com
smtp_port=587
sendmail_from = your-gmail-id@gmail.com
sendmail_path = "\"C:\xampp\sendmail\sendmail.exe\" -t"
;sendmail_path = "C:\xampp\mailtodisk\mailtodisk.exe"
ittasks at gmail dot com 28-Mar-2013 08:55
When dealing with mail headers "\n" and "\r\n" *sometimes* makes a big difference.

Once our CentOs servers got re-installed, all headers like:

  $headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
  $headers.= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
 ...

became part of message body instead of headers

I was able to fixed this by replacing "\r\n" with just "\n"
shenyqwilliam 12-Nov-2012 02:32
If you're sending a large attachment, you may encounter overflow problem.
AFAIK, two common limits could be responsible.

1. Postfix message size limit.
Edit /etc/postfix/main.cf . Change the value of "message_size_limit".

2. Apache memory size limit for scripts.
Edit /etc/php.ini . Change the value of "memory_limit".

//Then reload (or restart) Postfix and Apache.
//Empirically, sending 200MB attachment requires 500MB memory.

Be careful! Raising memory limits may cause unexpected consequences, and is hence deprecated.
Recommended alternatives include:
* Pack and split attachment into several emails.
* Only include a link to the file. The receiver can download it later.
* Use IMAP/POP3 server (e.g. Dovecot).
bburch at bouncingpixel dot com 11-Oct-2012 12:13
When using the PHP mail() function with IIS 6 on Windows Server 2003, check your "Relay" settings on the SMTP Virtual Server in IIS.  If you grant access to 127.0.0.1 and set then set your php.ini SMTP to the same IP address (along with setting the same port 25), you should have success in sending mail. 

I'm using PHP 5.3 and have had success with this configuration and did not have to define the "sendmail_from" setting in our php.ini file.
martin dot farrow at versacloud dot com 06-Aug-2012 09:07
I've noticed that on some versions of PHP occasionally mail() returns the empty string for success, rather than true or false. The empty string evaluates to false.

if you use constructs like

if ( mail( ... ) ){
  # do something here on success
}

this wont work consistently.

so you need code like

$ret=mail(....)

if ( $ret == '' || $ret ){
  # do something here
}

to get consistent results.
pavel.lint at vk.com 16-May-2012 11:22
Here's a small handy function I use to send email in UTF-8.

 <?php
function mail_utf8($to, $from_user, $from_email,
                                             $subject = '(No subject)', $message = '')
   {
      $from_user = "=?UTF-8?B?".base64_encode($from_user)."?=";
      $subject = "=?UTF-8?B?".base64_encode($subject)."?=";

      $headers = "From: $from_user <$from_email>\r\n".
               "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n" .
               "Content-type: text/html; CHARSET=gb2312" . "\r\n";

     return mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
   }
?>
rexlorenzo at gmail dot com 02-May-2012 01:24
Be careful to not put extra spaces for the $headers variable.

For example, this didn't work on our servers:

$headers = "From: $from \r\n Bcc: $bcc \r\n";

But this did:

$headers = "From: $from\r\nBcc: $bcc\r\n";

Notice the removal of the spaces around the first \r\n.
yarik dot bohatsky at gmail dot com 17-Apr-2012 03:02
If you want to send UTF-8 HTML letter you need to mention charset twice:

1) In message header:
<?php
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; CHARSET=gb2312' . "\r\n";
?>

2) In HTML header:
<?php
$message = '
<html>
<head>
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; CHARSET=gb2312" />
   <title>Fillon soutient à fond le retour d\'un Grand Prix de France</title>
</head>
<body>
   <p>Le Premier ministre Fran?ois Fillon, passionné d\'automobile et pilote à ses heures, a apporté un soutien appuyé au retour d\'un Grand Prix de France au calendrier 2013 de la Formule 1, en faisant un passage-éclair vendredi sur le circuit Paul Ricard dans le Var.</p>
</body>
</html>
';

In this case Outlook will also "understand" that message is encoded using UTF-8.
Max AT 15-Feb-2012 09:26
To define a mail sensitivity you have to put this line in the headers:

<?php
        $headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" ;
        $headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\n";

        $headers .= "Sensitivity: Personal\n";

 $status   = mail($to, $subject, $message,$headers);
?>

Possible Options:
Sensitivity: Normal, Personal, Private and Company-Confidential

These will be recognised and handled in Outlook, Thunderbird and others.
ABOMB 30-Jan-2012 10:16
I was having delivery issues from this function to Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.  I used the notes here to figure that you need to be setting your Return-Path to a valid email to catch bounces.  There are two extra delivery gotchas on top of that:

1) The domain in the email used in the -f option in the php.ini sendmail parameter or in the mail() extra parameters field, needs to have a valid SPF record for the domain (in DNS as a "TXT" record type for sure and add an additional  "SPF" type record if possible).  Why? That's header field being used for spam checks.

2) You should also use a domain key or DKIM.  The trick here is that the domain key/DKIM is case sensitive!  I used Cpanel to create my domain key which automatically used all lowercase domain names in the key creation.  I found when  sending email and using a camel case "-f account@MyDomainHere.Com" option, my key was not accepted.  However it was accepted when I used "-f account@mydomainhere.com".

There are many other factors that can contribute to mail not getting to inboxes, including your own multiple failed testing attempts, so I suggest you consult each site's guidelines and don't ask me for help.  These are just the couple technical issues that helped my case.

I hope this saves someone some time and headaches...
debis at woh dot rr dot com 14-Dec-2011 03:09
This is for Windows Server 2003, IIS 6.0 with SMTP virtual server.

The problem I had was not including init_set for the SMTP server, I thought the SMTP definition in the IIS SMTP virtual server configuration would work.  When I sent mail manually this was not an issue. 

Also, $mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers ); wouldn't work but $mail_sent = mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers); did.
Lack of date_default_timezone_set() only caused a warning because php guessed what it should be.

This worked:
<?php
$to      = 'nobody@example.com';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
    'Reply-To: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
    'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
ini_set ( "SMTP", "smtp-server.example.com" );
date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');

mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

And just so you can troubleshoot, this worked when sending mail from the command line/manually. CLI worked even though the php code without the init_set function wouldn't work.

You will notice that the "rcpt to" and "to" fields appear redundant, but if both are not used, the delivered mail's "to" field will be blank/empty.

-------------------------------
telnet www.example.com 25
helo
mail from: webmaster@example.com
rcpt to: someone@example.com
data
to: someone@example.com
subject: test again to make sure

this is my message
.
quit
-----------------------------------
shuitest at gmail dot com 02-Nov-2010 09:50
If you use mutt, do as below,

/usr/bin/mutt -s '$subject' -f /dev/null -e 'set copy=no' -e 'set from = "{$GLOBALS[cfg][email_from]}"' -a '$attach_file_full_path' '{$GLOBALS[cfg][email_to]}' </dev/null 2>&1;
Porjo 06-Jul-2010 11:19
Make sure you enclose \r\n in double quotes (not single quotes!) so that PHP can translate that into the correct linefeed code
umangberi at gmail dot com 02-May-2010 01:41
Outlook 2007 seemed to be a little finicky with me to have carriage returns in the headers. So any \r\n resulted in messages that had default apache messages sent over to me.

As soon as I removed \r from all of the headers, the script started working fine. Hope that helped.
Systemx 04-Nov-2009 02:29
Bare LFs in SMTP

Use This

<?php
// Fix any bare linefeeds in the message to make it RFC821 Compliant.
$message = preg_replace("#(?<!\r)\n#si", "\r\n", $message);
   
// Make sure there are no bare linefeeds in the headers
$headers = preg_replace('#(?<!\r)\n#si', "\r\n", $headers);
?>
Edward 01-Aug-2009 02:08
Currently my hosting service is on Godaddy. When attempting to use the mail function without the fifth parameter containing "-f", my message headers would not work.

Whenever your message headers do not work, simply try using the fifth parameter:

<?php
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers, "-femail.address@example.com");
?>
Erich at gasboysnospam dot net 18-Feb-2009 07:43
if your mail is failing (returns false) be aware that many servers are configured to kill mail going out with a bcc or cc header.

The ideal workaround is to use the smtp functions which servers allow because of its better audit trail. Alternatively call the mail function several times.

I've just spent about four hours trying to work out what I was doing wrong!!
molotster on google mail com 13-Oct-2008 01:03
Note, that single line should not contain more than 78 character, but is not allowed to contain more than 998 characters.

The possible consequences are:
Over 78 - clients are allowed to display the message in a "harder to read" way.
Over 998 - clients and servers are allowed to drop the message or cause any buffer-limit error.

See:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822 part 2.1.1.
richard at richard-sumilang dot com 22-Mar-2008 12:12
If you are using the sendmail app from an exim package or something you don't really need to change the normal parameters PHP gives it (-t -i) as other posts described.

I just added "-f myemail@example.com" and it worked.

One thing that got me stuck for a few hours was trying to figure out why the return-path was set as the user (user running php) and not what I was setting it with the -f option then I later found at that in order to forcefully set the return-path the user account running the command must be in exim's trusted users configuration! It helps to add trusted_groups as well then everything works fine :)
- Richard Sumilang
Alex Jaspersen 30-May-2007 11:03
For qmail users, I have written a function that talks directly to qmail-queue, rather than going through the sendmail wrapper used by mail(). Thus it allows more direct control over the message (for example, you can adapt the function to display "undisclosed recipients" in to the To: header). It also performs careful validation of the e-mail addresses passed to it, making it more difficult for spammers to exploit your scripts.

Please note that this function differs from the mail() function in that the from address must be passed as a _separate_ argument. It is automatically put into the message headers and _does not_ need to be included in $additional_headers.

$to can either be an array or a single address contained in a string.
$message should not contain any carriage return characters - only linefeeds.

No validation is performed on $additional_headers. This is mostly unnecessary because qmail will ignore any additional To: headers injected by a malicious user. However if you have some strange mail setup it might be a problem.

The function returns false if the message fails validation or is rejected by qmail-queue, and returns true on success.

<?php
function qmail_queue($to, $from, $subject, $message, $additional_headers = "")
{
    // qmail-queue location and hostname used for Message-Id
    $cmd = "/var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue";
    $hostname = trim(file_get_contents("/var/qmail/control/me"));
   
    // convert $to into an array
    if(is_scalar($to))
        $to = array($to);
   
    // BEGIN VALIDATION
    // e-mail address validation
    $e = "/^[-+\\.0-9=a-z_]+@([-0-9a-z]+\\.)+([0-9a-z]){2,4}$/i";
    // from address
    if(!preg_match($e, $from)) return false;
    // to address(es)
    foreach($to as $rcpt)
    {
        if(!preg_match($e, $rcpt)) return false;
    }
   
    // subject validation (only printable 7-bit ascii characters allowed)
    // needs to be adapted to allow for foreign languages with 8-bit characters
    if(!preg_match("/^[\\040-\\176]+$/", $subject)) return false;
   
    // END VALIDATION
   
    // open qmail-queue process
    $dspec = array
    (
        array("pipe", "r"), // message descriptor
        array("pipe", "r") // envelope descriptor
    );
    $pipes = array();
    $proc = proc_open($cmd, $dspec, $pipes);
    if(!is_resource($proc)) return false;
   
    // write additional headers
    if(!empty($additional_headers))
    {
        fwrite($pipes[0], $additional_headers . "\n");
    }
   
    // write to/from/subject/date/message-ID headers
    fwrite($pipes[0], "To: " . $to[0]); // first recipient
    for($i = 1; $i < sizeof($to); $i++) // additional recipients
    {
        fwrite($pipes[0], ", " . $to[$i]);
    }
    fwrite($pipes[0], "\nSubject: " . $subject . "\n");
    fwrite($pipes[0], "From: " . $from . "\n");
    fwrite($pipes[0], "Message-Id: <" . md5(uniqid(microtime())) . "@" . $hostname . ">\n");
    fwrite($pipes[0], "Date: " . date("r") . "\n\n");
    fwrite($pipes[0], $message);
    fwrite($pipes[0], "\n");
    fclose($pipes[0]);
   
    // write from address and recipients
    fwrite($pipes[1], "F" . $from . "\0");
    foreach($to as $rcpt)
    {
        fwrite($pipes[1], "T" . $rcpt . "\0");
    }
    fwrite($pipes[1], "\0");
    fclose($pipes[1]);
   
    // return true on success.
    return proc_close($proc) == 0;
}
?>
Ben Cooke 15-Dec-2005 05:34
Note that there is a big difference between the behavior of this function on Windows systems vs. UNIX systems. On Windows it delivers directly to an SMTP server, while on a UNIX system it uses a local command to hand off to the system's own MTA.

The upshot of all this is that on a Windows system your  message and headers must use the standard line endings \r\n as prescribed by the email specs. On a UNIX system the MTA's "sendmail" interface assumes that recieved data will use UNIX line endings and will turn any \n to \r\n, so you must supply only \n to mail() on a UNIX system to avoid the MTA hypercorrecting to \r\r\n.

If you use plain old \n on a Windows system, some MTAs will get a little upset. qmail in particular will refuse outright to accept any message that has a lonely \n without an accompanying \r.
msheldon at desertraven dot com 15-May-2005 12:09
Just a comment on some of the examples, and as a note for those who may be unaware. The SMTP RFC 822 is VERY explicit in stating that \r\n is the ONLY acceptable line break format in the headers, though is a little vague about the message body. While many MTAs will deal with just \n, I've run accross plenty of them that will exhibit "interesting" behaviours when this happens. Those MTAs that are strict in compliance will definitely break when header lines are terminated with only \n. They will also most likely break if the body of the message contains more than 1000 consecutive characters without a \r\n.*

Note that RFC 821 is a little more clear in defining:
"line
      A a sequence of ASCII characters ending with a <CRLF>."

RFC 821 makes no distinction between header lines and message body lines, since both are actually transmitted during the DATA phase.

Bottom line, best practice is to be sure to convert any bare \n characters in the message to \r\n.

* "The maximum total length of a text line including the <CRLF> is 1000 characters" (RFC 821)
php dot net at schrecktech dot com 02-Mar-2005 04:07
When sending MIME email make sure you follow the documentation with the "70" characters per line...you may end up with missing characters...and that is really hard to track down...
Paul 25-Feb-2004 02:51
My mime multipart/alternative messages were going ok, until I switched to qmail with php .. after years of painfull searching, I came across this on the Life With Qmail 'Gotchas' section:

G.11. Carriage Return/Linefeed (CRLF) line breaks don't work

qmail-inject and other local injection mechanisms like sendmail don't work right when messages are injected with DOS-style carriage return/linefeed (CRLF) line breaks. Unlike Sendmail, qmail requires locally-injected messages to use Unix newlines (LF only). This is a common problem with PHP scripts.

So now, I can go back to sending emails with text AND html components :)
f dot touchard at laposte dot net 30-Jan-2003 07:46
***Encoding plain text as quoted-printable in MIME email***

If you don't want to install IMAP and use imap_8bit() to encode plain text or html message as quoted-printable
(friendly french special characters encoding :-) in MIME email, try this function.
I haven't fully tested it ( like with microtime with long mails). I send html message as 7-bit, so I didn't try yet with html.
If you have good html practise, you don't really need to encode html as quote-printable as it only uses 7-bit chars.
F.Touchard

<?php
function qp_encoding($Message) {
   
    /* Build (most polpular) Extended ASCII Char/Hex MAP (characters >127 & <255) */
    for ($i=0; $i<127; $i++) {
        $CharList[$i] = "/".chr($i+128)."/";
        $HexList[$i] = "=".strtoupper(bin2hex(chr($i+128)));
    }

    /* Encode equal sign & 8-bit characters as equal signs followed by their hexadecimal values */
    $Message = str_replace("=", "=3D", $Message);
    $Message = preg_replace($CharList, $HexList, $Message);

    /* Lines longer than 76 characters (size limit for quoted-printable Content-Transfer-Encoding)
        will be cut after character 75 and an equals sign is appended to these lines. */
    $MessageLines = split("\n", $Message);
    $Message_qp = "";
    while(list(, $Line) = each($MessageLines)) {
        if (strlen($Line) > 75) {
            $Pointer = 0;       
            while ($Pointer <= strlen($Line)) {
                $Offset = 0;
                if (preg_match("/^=(3D|([8-9A-F]{1}[0-9A-F]{1}))$/", substr($Line, ($Pointer+73), 3))) $Offset=-2;
                if (preg_match("/^=(3D|([8-9A-F]{1}[0-9A-F]{1}))$/", substr($Line, ($Pointer+74), 3))) $Offset=-1;
                $Message_qp.= substr($Line, $Pointer, (75+$Offset))."=\n";
                if ((strlen($Line) - ($Pointer+75)) <= 75) {               
                    $Message_qp.= substr($Line, ($Pointer+75+$Offset))."\n";
                    break 1;
                }
                $Pointer+= 75+$Offset;
            }
        } else {
            $Message_qp.= $Line."\n";
        }
    }       
    return $Message_qp;
}
?>
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