mail() automatically mails the message specified in message to the receiver specified in to. Multiple recipients can be specified by putting a comma between each address in to. Email with attachments and special types of content can be sent using this function. This is accomplished via MIME-encoding - for more information, see this Zend article or the PEAR Mime Classes.
The following RFC's may also be useful: RFC 1896, RFC 2045, RFC 2046, RFC 2047, RFC 2048, and RFC 2049.
mail() returns TRUE if the mail was successfully accepted for delivery, FALSE otherwise.
Warning |
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. PHP < 4.3 only supported the Cc: header element (and was case-sensitive). PHP >= 4.3 supports all the mentioned header elements and is no longer case-sensitive. |
If a fourth string argument is passed, this string is inserted at the end of the header. This is typically used to add extra headers. Multiple extra headers are separated with a carriage return and newline.
Note: You must use \r\n to separate headers, although some Unix mail transfer agents may work with just a single newline (\n).
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. You may need to add the user that your web server runs as to your sendmail configuration to prevent a 'X-Warning' header from being added to the message when you set the envelope sender using this method.
Note: This fifth parameter was added in PHP 4.0.5. Since PHP 4.2.3 this parameter is disabled in safe_mode and the mail() function will expose a warning message and return FALSE if you're trying to use it.
You can also use simple string building techniques to build complex email messages.
Note: Make sure you do not have any newline characters in the to or subject, or the mail may not be sent properly.
Note: 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 (Particularly under Windows).
See also imap_mail().