php Mail Function

[Dubya008]

I'm using the php mail function on some forms for our company website. There is reason to believe that they sometimes don't work. Is this a normal behavior for this? We've been "discussing" whether or not they work for about 2 - 3 days and in most instances they do.

 

However we've had 1 person fill them out and then we never received the emails.

 

I was wondering if some of the people that have worked with php for a longtime have ever had any experience with this type of thing happening.

[PFMaBiSmAd]

The most common reason why the mail() function would randomly not send emails would be if you are putting a user entered email address in as the From: email address and relaying restrictions on the sending mail server is preventing it from being sent or domain/server checking on the receiving mail server is preventing its reception. The second most common reason would be if content on a line exceeds 70 characters and/or does not contain proper newline characters.

 

Both of these problems can (sometimes mail servers are setup to NOT provide error feedback) result in php notice/warning errors.

 

Is error_reporting set to E_ALL and log_errors set to ON so that all php detected errors would be logged so that you would be getting information about any problems that php detects?

 

You could also log all relevant information for each form submission so that you have a record of what is occurring. See the error_log function.

[Dubya008]

Thank you for your response. I believe that is exactly what we're doing: using the end-user's address to send the info to our specific address. I've pasted some code that we had from the website designer. Can you tell me if you think that is the reason why it wouldn't work.

 

 

define('kOptional', true);define('kMandatory', false);error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_WARNING | E_PARSE);ini_set('track_errors', true);function DoStripSlashes($fieldValue)  { if ( get_magic_quotes_gpc() ) {   if (is_array($fieldValue) ) {    return array_map('DoStripSlashes', $fieldValue);   } else {    return stripslashes($fieldValue);   } } else {   return $fieldValue; } }function FilterCChars($theString) {return preg_replace('/[\x00-\x1F]/', '', $theString);}function CheckEmail($email, $optional) {if ( (strlen($email) == 0) && ($optional === kOptional) ) {  return true;} elseif ( eregi("^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,4})$", $email) ) {  return true;} else {  return false;}}if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])) {$clientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];} else {$clientIP = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];}$FTGFname = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Fname'] );$FTGLname = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Lname'] );$FTGCompany = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Company'] );$FTGEmail = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Email'] );$FTGWebsite = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Website'] );$FTGPhone = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Phone'] );$FTGCity = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['City'] );$FTGState = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['State'] );$FTGPostal = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Postal'] );$FTGCountry = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Country'] );$FTGQes1 = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Qes1'] );$FTGQes2 = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Qes2'] );$FTGQes3 = DoStripSlashes( $_POST['Qes3'] );$FTGPage=DoStripSlashes( $_POST['page'] );$validationFailed = false;# Fields Validationsif (!CheckEmail($FTGEmail, kMandatory)) { $validationFailed = true; }# Redirect user to the error pageif ($validationFailed === true) {#header("Location: http://lynxfulfillment.com/index.html");echo "<script>location='{$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']}'</script>"; }if ( $validationFailed === false ) {# Email to Form Owner  $emailSubject = FilterCChars("Lynx Fulfillment Website");  $emailBody = "Fname : $FTGFname\n"  . "Lname : $FTGLname\n"  . "\n"  . "Company : $FTGCompany\n"  . "Email : $FTGEmail\n"  . "Website : $FTGWebsite\n"  . "Phone : $FTGPhone\n"  . "City : $FTGCity\n"  . "State : $FTGState\n"  . "Postal : $FTGPostal\n"  . "Country : $FTGCountry\n"  . "\n"  . "Qes1 : \n"  . "$FTGQes1\n"  . "\n"  . "Qes2 : \n"  . "$FTGQes2\n"  . "\n"  . "Qes3 : \n"  . "$FTGQes3\n"  . "Site Number : 1\n"  . "Page Used : $FTGPage\n"  . "IP: $clientip \n"  . "index.html";  $emailTo = 'Lynx <[email protected]>';     $emailFrom = FilterCChars("$FTGEmail");     $emailHeader = "From: $emailFrom\n"   . "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"   . "Content-type: text/plain; charset=\"ISO-8859-1\"\n"   . "Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit\n";     mail($emailTo, $emailSubject, $emailBody, $emailHeader);        # Redirect user to success pageheader("Location: http://www.lynxfulfillment.com/success.html");}?>

 

 

[PFMaBiSmAd]

The user entered email address should be put into a Reply-to: header. The From: address should be a valid email hosted at the sending mail server (even if you are sending it to yourself.)