PHP e mail help

[rfmeier]

Hello,

 

I am relatively new to PHP.  I am in the process of creating my own website and want to add a contact/comment page.  I am using Win XP+Apache.  I usually use gMail for all my mail and was wondering if it is possible to send email through my gMail account using PHP.  Will the mail() PHP function work for this?  I have tried looking for a tutorial online, but haven't found one yet.  Is there anyone who could point me in the direction about how I can begin with this?  Thanks in advance.

 

RFMeier

[per1os]

http://www.vulgarisoip.com/?p=17

 

I believe that is what you need.

[atomicrabbit]

... to send email through my gMail account using PHP ...

WHat do you mean by this? Do you mean you want the email that gets sent from the php email form to be FROM your gmail account? If so, all you have to do is set the email headers so that the from email address is your gmail address. You can do it like this:

 

$from_name = "John Smith";
$from_email = "your_email_goes_here@gmal.com";
$to_email = "to@email.com";
$subject = "This is the email subject";
$message = "This is my message text\n You can write as much as you would like here";

$headers = "From: $from_name<$from_email>\n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: <$from_email>\n";

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

[rfmeier]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I will try these out.  Does the mail() function have to use an email account of sort in order to send the mail to someone?

[GingerRobot]

In theory, no. But it will depend on your host. Some free hosts put some restriction on the use of the mail() function to prevent spam - i've seen some which only allow you to use it if you're paying to use their email too etc. Some hosts dont support the function at all.