First, I should point you to the mail reference for some configuration options as well. They're available here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php
Basic syntax is simple:
mail("toAddress","Subject","Message"[, "headerInfo"[, "options"]]);
mail("phpclass@linux-classes.com","This is a test","Hello phpclass!");
I usually think it's better to set up some standard variable to pass to the mail function. Example:
$to = "phpclass@linux-classes.com"; $subject = "This is a test"; $message = "Hello phpclass!"; $headers = ""; mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
Why??? Because if I want to add header information, I can simply append the $headers variable.
For example, I can force the "From" header by doing the following:
$headers.="From: myEmail@my.com\r\n";
Notice the "\r\n", this is needed for the mail server to properly parse the header information
I can also set the other headers as well. Example:
$headers.="Reply-To: myOtherEmail@my.com\r\n"; $headers.="Cc: copyAddress@my.com\r\n"; $headers.="Bcc: nastyCopy@my.com\r\n";
Want to send out an html version of an email? Set the content type in the header. Example:
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n"; //Use Mime 1.0 $headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n"; //Sets html content type and char set as iso-8859-1 (European)
If we put all of the above together, we get this...
//Set to and subject vars
$to = "phpclass@linux-classes.com";
$subject = "This is a test";
//Create html message
$message = "<html><head><style type='text/css'>* {font-family:arial;}</style></html><body>";
$message.="<p>This is an html message</p>";
$message.="<p><a href='http://link.com/to/may/page'>This is a link</a></p>";
$message.="</body></html>";
$headers = "";
$headers.="From: myEmail@my.com\r\n";
$headers.="Reply-To: myOtherEmail@my.com\r\n";
$headers.="Cc: copyAddress@my.com\r\n";
$headers.="Bcc: nastyCopy@my.com\r\n";
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n"; //Use Mime 1.0
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n"; //Sets html content type and char set as iso-8859-1 (European)
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
This will send a nicely formatted html email to phpclass@linux-classes.com.