PHP Send Mail Tutorial

**ciullaanthony** · 01-21-2012, 08:44 PM

Intorduction To Tutorial

Lots and lots of website use PHP forms to communicate with there users. You will have most certainly seen one by the time you see this post, or if not used one to contact someone. This contact form will take the users information that he or she has filled out and then submitted it to you. In the case below, the information will be sent to the users email.

Create The HTML Feedback Form

To create the form use the following code below.

Code:

<?php    //Document index.php ?>
<html>
<head>
<title>PHP Send Mail</title>
</head>
<body>
<blockquote>
<form method="post" action="sendmail.php">
Email:< input name="email" type="text" />
Message:<textarea name="message" rows="10" cols="30">
</textarea>
<input type="submit" />
</form>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>

This form will take the email address, and the message the user has for your website and send it to the page called "sendmail.php". The php script will know which piece of information being sent by the input name="" tag. So we know the email will be typed in the email box by the name tag: name="email".

PHP's Sendmail Code

Now we have set the form to POST the data to sendmail.php we need to create a new file named “sendmail.php". Once you have created the file you can enter the following code into your empty php file. Don’t worry I’ll explain each line in a moment.

Code:

<?php    //Document sendmail.php ?>
<html>
<head>
<title>PHP Send Mail</title></head>
<body>
<blockquote>
<?php
$email = $_GET['email'] ;
$message = $_GET['message'] ;
mail( "yourname@example.com", "Email Subject", $message, "From: $email" );
print "Congratulations your email has been sent";
?>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>

Sendmail Function Explanation

Okay this script will now send email out using php’s sendmail function ya!

Line 2 - 3: These get the data from the form keeping in mind the email form box is named name="email" and the $_GET variable is also called email.

Line 4: This is the clever part that sends the email, The mail() function allows to… specify the email address of the recipient, place the the subject of the email which will appear in the subject line, puts the message of the email which appears in the emails main body and the function allows you to specify the senders email so the recipient can then send a reply if required.

The sendmail function is no way limited to this configuration but as a beginner tutorial this is the minimum information you need to make mail() work.

For more information on the sendmail function then please go to php's sendmail function page.

line 5 - Will display “Congratulations your email has been sent"

I hope the tutorial helps any comments or question as always can be post below.