Sending Email with Headers | Spring Into PHP 5

You can do more with the mail functionfor example, you can set additional email headers to cc ("carbon copy") or bcc ("blind carbon copy," where the recipient doesn't know a copy was also sent to someone else) people. To set such headers, you use the additional_headers parameter in the call to the mail function:

 mail(string to, string subject, string message [, string additional_headers [, string additional_parameters]])

Note that you use \r\n to separate headers (although some Unix mail transfer agents may work with just a single newline, \n). Example 9-9, phpemailheaders.html, lets the user set "cc" and "bcc" addresses.

Example 9-9. Using headers, phpemailheaders.html

 <HTML>     <HEAD><TITLE>Send me some email with headers</TITLE></HEAD>     <BODY><CENTER>             <H1>Send me some email with headers</H1>             <BR>             <FORM METHOD=POST ACTION="phpemailheaders.php">                 Please enter your message and click Submit:                 <BR>                 cc: <INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="cc">                 bcc: <INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="bcc">                 <BR>                 <TEXTAREA NAME="message" COLS="50" ROWS="5"></TEXTAREA>                 <BR>                 <INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" VALUE="Submit">             </FORM>           </CENTER></BODY> </HTML>

You can see what this page looks like in Figure 9-9.

Figure 9-9. Sending email with headers.

In phpemailheaders.php, Example 9-10, we check the cc and bcc data, and if either exists, we add them to the variable $headers:

 if(isset($_REQUEST["cc"])){     $headers .= "cc:" . $_REQUEST["cc"] . "\r\n"; } if(isset($_REQUEST["bcc"])){     $headers .= "bcc:" . $_REQUEST["bcc"] . "\r\n"; }

After we've set the headers as needed, we use the mail function to send the email, as you see in phpemailheaders.php, Example 9-10.

Example 9-10. Sending email with headers, phpemailheaders.php

 <HTML>     <HEAD><TITLE>Sending email</TITLE></HEAD>     <BODY>         <CENTER>             <H1>Sending email</H1>             Your email was sent.             <BR>             <?php                 $headers = "";                 if(isset($_REQUEST["cc"])){                     $headers .= "cc:" . $_REQUEST["cc"] . "\r\n";                 }                 if(isset($_REQUEST["bcc"])){                     $headers .= "bcc:" . $_REQUEST["bcc"] . "\r\n";                 }                 $result = mail("steve@chooseanisp.com", "Web mail",                     $_REQUEST["message"], $headers);             ?>          </CENTER>     <BODY> </HTML>

This script sends the email to steve@chooseanisp.com, along with the cc and bcc addresses.