PHP Reference

Quick Reference

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

<?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('johnny@example.com', 'My subject', $msg);
?>

Syntax

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

Parameters

ParameterDescription
toSpecifies the receiver(s) of the email (required)
subjectSpecifies the subject of the email (required)
messageDefines the message to be sent; each line should be separated with a LF (\n); lines should not exceed 70 characters (required)
headersSpecifies additional headers, like From, Cc, and Bcc; the additional headers should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n); all emails must contain a From header which can be set with this parameter or in the php.ini file
parametersSpecifies an additional parameter to the sendmail program (the one defined in the sendmail_path configuration setting)

PHP Notes:

  • When using PHP, single or double quotation marks are acceptable and work identically to one another; choose whichever you prefer, and stay consistent
  • Arrays count starting from zero NOT one; so item 1 is position [0], item 2 is position [1], and item 3 is position [2] … and so on

We’d like to acknowledge that we learned a great deal of our coding from W3Schools and TutorialsPoint, borrowing heavily from their teaching process and excellent code examples. We highly recommend both sites to deepen your experience, and further your coding journey. We’re just hitting the basics here at 1SMARTchicken.