PHP mail() function not sending email

Question

I am attempting to send an email using the mail() PHP function. I had it working until I attempted to give it a subject of "User registration", then the mail is not sent!

Heres the code (have simplified it greatly)

$to = $this->post_data['register-email'];
$message = 'Hello etc';
$headers = 'From: noreply@example.com' . "\r\n" ;
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; chareset=iso-8859-1\r\n';
$headers .= 'From: Website <admin@example.com>';
mail($to, 'User Registration', $message, $headers);

I also attempted to use a variable containing the string of text but that didnt work.

Why is it not sending the mail when I add the subject exception?

Thanks

EDIT: updated code thats still not working

$to = $this->post_data['register-email'];
$message = 'Hello etc';

$headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: Website <admin@example.com>';
mail($to, 'User Registration', $message, $headers);

Is this code running on Linux or Windows? If Windows what PHP version you running on? — Kev, Sep 17 '13 at 16:05
Also you don't show us how you're adding the "Subject:", can you add that. — Kev, Sep 17 '13 at 16:06
@crm Try using this `$to = $_POST['register-email'];` instead of `$to = $this->post_data['register-email'];` — Funk Forty Niner, Sep 17 '13 at 16:12
@crm Try removing the space at the of `$headers = 'From: noreply@example.com' . "\r\n" ;` to read as `$headers = 'From: noreply@example.com' . "\r\n";` I've seen cases like this where having a space caused havoc. — Funk Forty Niner, Sep 17 '13 at 16:14
@crm Wait a minute. You have two `From:` this `$headers = 'From: noreply@example.com' . "\r\n" ;` and `$headers .= 'From: Website ';` remove one and try again. — Funk Forty Niner, Sep 17 '13 at 16:15
@Fred-ii- yes removed one from, added mime and changed the order of the headers, should work now =/ — Breezer, Sep 17 '13 at 16:17
@Breezer I updated my question with the still not working code you guys suggested. — crmepham, Sep 17 '13 at 16:21
@Fred-ii- well not by the information that was given, then I assumed that somehow one of them are ignored since he "only" added subject to his script — Breezer, Sep 17 '13 at 16:21
@Breezer Well the OP will need post the form to go with it. I suspect something in there. Your answer should work, however I'm not too keen on the `$this->post_data` since this belongs to a class or a PHPmailer function, I do believe. I doubt we're seeing full code here. — Funk Forty Niner, Sep 17 '13 at 16:23
@crm You need to post your full code and form. I don't particularly get `$this->post_data` - I suspect that is a PHPmailer function. — Funk Forty Niner, Sep 17 '13 at 16:23
@Fred-ii- `$this->post_data['register-email']` simply holds the recipients email address. So after simple validation the user is sent an automatic email. All was working okay until I starting playing with the subject :/ — crmepham, Sep 17 '13 at 16:31
@crm Try putting the subject inside double-quotes then `"User Registration"` or assign it as a variable `$subject="User Registration";` then use `mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);` — Funk Forty Niner, Sep 17 '13 at 16:33

score 9 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 03 '15 at 12:33

On your 4th line you're using ' that handles everything inside of it as a string so change

$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; chareset=iso-8859-1\r\n';

To:

$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";

and as mentioned in the comments change chareset to charset

Edit:

if your sending a txt/html mail you have according to documentation to set mime in the headers too so try this

    $to = $this->post_data['register-email'];
    $message = 'Hello etc';

    $headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
    $headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
    $headers .= 'From: Website <admin@example.com>' . "\r\n";
    mail($to, 'User Registration', $message, $headers);

If it still doesn't work you could try to debugg your code, simply add

error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', '1');

on top of the page, and take it from there, and if you still can't solve it by yourself post it here and I'll do my best to help ya out.

Thanks, I updated my question with the new code that still doesnt work. — crmepham, Sep 17 '13 at 16:11

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 30 '19 at 14:59

I'm using this code on most of my projects:

$subject = 'subject';
$message = 'message';
$to = 'user@gmail.com';
$type = 'plain'; // or HTML
$charset = 'utf-8';

$mail     = 'no-reply@'.str_replace('www.', '', $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']);
$uniqid   = md5(uniqid(time()));
$headers  = 'From: '.$mail."\n";
$headers .= 'Reply-to: '.$mail."\n";
$headers .= 'Return-Path: '.$mail."\n";
$headers .= 'Message-ID: <'.$uniqid.'@'.$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].">\n";
$headers .= 'MIME-Version: 1.0'."\n";
$headers .= 'Date: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s', time())."\n";
$headers .= 'X-Priority: 3'."\n";
$headers .= 'X-MSMail-Priority: Normal'."\n";
$headers .= 'Content-Type: multipart/mixed;boundary="----------'.$uniqid.'"'."\n";
$headers .= '------------'.$uniqid."\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/'.$type.';charset='.$charset.''."\n";
$headers .= 'Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit';

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

I got this error: "Multiple or malformed newlines found". Which was corrected after removing one of \n (there are two) from Content-Type headers line. — Yeti, Mar 28 '17 at 09:46

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 19 '15 at 14:26

-1

I would suggest to use PHP_EOL instead of \r\n or \n as the line break would then be determined by your environment...

$headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . PHP_EOL;

etc.. hoping this might finally solve your problem!

answered Mar 19 '15 at 14:26

MediaVince

479
1
8
13

Headers should be separated by \r\n no matter what environment, see docs here: https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php. – contrebis Sep 01 '15 at 12:03
It ultimately depends on your environement as on Linux PHP_EOL = \n and on Windows as \r\n (the proper CRLF per RFC) "2.3.7 Lines ... In addition, the appearance of "bare" "CR" or "LF" characters in text (i.e., either without the other) has a long history of causing problems in mail implementations and applications that use the mail system as a tool. " What's to say that the mail client does not convert properly those instances.. AFAIK I've never had trouble on linux with email and never had double lines because of \r\n as is neither! – MediaVince Nov 17 '15 at 12:00
But PHP_EOL has nothing to do with the spec for an email. In my experience, assuming that something *might possibly* convert something is a recipe for a bugs, if not now, in the future. – contrebis Nov 17 '15 at 15:47
You're right in that a bug is easily introduced by lack a of understanding but in this case, i tend to think that following the RFC to the bit is a little exagerated! In the end the most valuable response to the initial post is to actually use a library such as SwitfMailer::MailTransport (btw it uses a condition if not on linux and not using SMTP to actually replace \r\n with PHP_EOL in headers, body and in [this github recent commit](https://github.com/swiftmailer/swiftmailer/commit/cff72ef856d9aa3f6d7d221eea94ed939539d74b) the subject too :) it's been like that for a while now! – MediaVince Nov 17 '15 at 16:23

PHP mail() function not sending email

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