Sending E-mail with PHP (basic mail() & Gmail with phpmailer )

Basic PHP mail()







Send a simple email:






<?php

// the message

$msg = "First line of text\nSecond line of text";

// use wordwrap() if lines are longer than 70 characters

$msg = wordwrap($msg,70);

// send email

mail("someone@example.com","My subject",$msg);

?>




Definition and Usage

The mail() function allows you to send emails directly from a script.




Syntax



mail(to,subject,message,headers,parameters);




Basic PHP mail() Function code to send emails from a form

Below is the code for the basic email function. We can take the script and actually use a form on our website to set the variables in the script above to send an email.
<?php
//if "email" variable is filled out, send email
  if (isset($_REQUEST['email']))  {
  
  //Email information
  $admin_email = "someone@example.com";
  $email = $_REQUEST['email'];
  $subject = $_REQUEST['subject'];
  $comment = $_REQUEST['comment'];
  
  //send email
  mail($email, "$subject", $comment, "From:" . $email);
  
  //Email response
  echo "Thank you for contacting us!";
  }
  
  //if "email" variable is not filled out, display the form
  else  {
?>

 <form method="post">
  Email: <input name="email" type="text" /><br />
  Subject: <input name="subject" type="text" /><br />
  Message:<br />
  <textarea name="comment" rows="15" cols="40"></textarea><br />
  <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
  </form>
  
<?php
  }
?>




So let’s now review what the form is actually doing. 
 1. The first part checks to make sure the email input field is filled out. If it is not, then it will display the HTML form on the page. If the email is in fact, set (after the visitor fills out the form), it is ready to send.  
2. When the submit button is pressed, after the form is filled out, the page reloads and reads that the email input is set, so it sends the email.
3. if you get following error,  Warning: mail() [function.mail]: Failed to connect to mailserver at "localhost" port 25,

then make sure your php.ini configured correctly you have to configure these values on php.ini file
SMTP = smtp.yourdomain.com  
smtp_port = 25 
username = info@yourdomain.com
password = yourmailpassord
sendmail_from = info@yourdomain.com

Sending E-mail with PHP (Gmail SMTP and phpmailer)

 tutorial for sending PHP Mail using Gmail as your SMTP engine (with help of phpmailer functions.

before you start you must have valid gmail account and web server capable of PHP

• PHP (you know, PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor). Its a lovely language for developing web pages. If you already knew that, then good. If not, you might want to read a good PHP Tutorial.
• A local apache+PHP webserver running to test with. I am using  AppServ -http://www.appservnetwork.com/  while on Windows 7.
• Can edit your PHP.ini configuration file. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, get really familiar with the above two.

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1. If you haven’t done so already, get a PHP server running.
2. Download PHP-Mailer .
3. Go to your Apache  web server directory C:\AppServ\www\PHP_MAIL folder (in AppSever), and extract the PHP Mailer into it. I’ll call this folder Root from now on.(it contain - 3 PHP files- class.phpmailer.php , class.pop3.php , class.smtp.php , include   class.phpmailer.php in your test_gmail.php file ,source code is given below)
4. Now go to Root\PHP-Mailer\examples\, and open up test_smtp_gmail_basic.php.(i have created my own test_gmail.php in side example, with the following content )
5. Now do some minor editing. (Just change the Emails to your send and receiver, and type your password. )

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<?php

include("../class.phpmailer.php");

$mail             = new PHPMailer();
$body             = $mail->getFile('contents.html');
$body             = eregi_replace("[\]",'',$body);

$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->SMTPAuth   = true;  // enable SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPKeepAlive = true;
$mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";  // sets the prefix to the servier
$mail->Host       = "smtp.gmail.com"; // sets GMAIL as the SMTP server
$mail->Port       = 465;// set the SMTP port for the GMAIL server
$mail->Username   = "umeshnarayanan1983@gmail.com";  // GMAIL username
$mail->Password   = "********";// your GMAIL password
$mail->AddReplyTo("umeshnarayanan1983@gmail.com","Umesh Narayanan");
$mail->From       = "umeshnarayanan1983@gmail.com";
$mail->FromName   = "Umesh Narayanan";


$mail->Subject    = "PHPMailer Test Subject via gmail";


$mail->AltBody    = "To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer!"; // optional, comment out and test
$mail->WordWrap   = 50; // set word wrap

$mail->MsgHTML($body);

$mail->AddAddress("umeshnarayanan1@gmail.com", "Umeshnarayanan");

$mail->AddAttachment("images/activate.jpg");     // attachment

$mail->IsHTML(true); // send as HTML

if(!$mail->Send()) {
  echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
  echo "Email has been sent Sucessfuly!";
}

?>


6.Now, pressing save, you have almost done . Ok, the actual step is you need to edit your PHP.ini file settings. You can find that C:\Windows or  C:\AppServ\php5

or you can Go Start > All Programs > AppServ> Configuration server >PHP Edit the php.ini Configuration  as show below




open the PHP.ini file, then search for “openssl”. Go ahead and remove ‘;’ comment symbol from the start of the line.

extension=php_openssl.dll

7. Restart your servers (optional -  restart your system )
8. navigate to http://localhost/PHP_MAIL/examples/test_gmail.php in your browser. ( navigate to your file through browser )
9. And then check your Receivers Inbox. 

Full source code can be downloaded from the following

Google doc link - https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B30amJFTQ4KbRlExVHNlQWM1QkU
(download and extract the whole folder in your root folder , and change email and password and you have done It!)


if you have any query pls contact me - umeshnarayanan1@gmail.com