E-mail in PHP

Many of the scripting languages require special set up(like CGI) to send an e-mail, But with PHP it is very easy, since it uses one simple command called mail(). This command is used as follows.

The recepients address to whom mail has to be sent is mentioned using the $to variable. Subject line is mentioned using the $subject. And finally the body of the mail is denoted by $body variable.

If at all any additional headers has to be added to the mail then $headers is used. For example if we want to add cc(carbon copy) and bcc(blank carbon copy) headers then this variable can be used.

Befopre sending the mail you should have to set the variable content that are to be used in mail command. Here is a simple code that illustrate this.

Here e-mail is from [email protected]. This code performs two things.

• Firstly it will send a message to [email protected] with
  subject:'This is PHP Script'and
  text: PHP is one of the best scripting language
• Secondly It will output the
  text:Mail sent to [email protected] to the browser.

Something you may have noticed from the example is that the From line ended with \n. This is acutally a very important character when sending e-mail. It is the new line character and tells PHP to take a new line in an e-mail. It is very important that this is put in after each header you add so that your e-mail will follow the international standards and will be delivered.

The \n code can also be used in the body section of the e-mail to put line breaks in but should not be used in the subject or the To field

In this code the mail() function is taken into a IF loop, If the the funtion executes properly, then the echo statement inside the IF funtion is executed saying that the mail has been sent. Otherwise it displays the error message saying that the mail has not sent and suggests to correct the problem.