I use PHP's mail function to send emails from my server, which currently also handles mail. However, I would like PHP to start sending messages through a different SMTP relay, not the server it's running on. I checked out php.ini, and it appears that it is only possible to specify a different relay on a Windows PC, whilst my server is running OS X Snow Leopard. Is it possible to change the relay settings? Ideally, I wouldn't want to incorporate anything new into my PHP code, as I use the mail function all over the place.
You cannot do this without either setting up a sendmail alternative on your server that routes mail through SMTP, or much much easier, using a library like Swiftmailer.
PHP does not have the capability to use an external SMTP server built in (Unless you are on a Windows platform).
Related
I have a local server which host PHP applications. My applications send emails to different addresses. However, I am noticing a problem that I am unable to figure out. It send emails to internal addresses but it won't send messages to external addresses.
I also have an exchange server on the same network. so for example I have these 2 "internal domain"
domain1.com
domain2.com
if I execute this php function from my application it gets delivered with no problem
mail("name#domain1.com","Test Subject","Test message");
However, if I try sening a message to gmail, yahoo or any external domain it does not send it
mail("name#gmail.com","Test Subject","Test message");
My server is running on Windows 2008 Server R2 with PHP5.3.19 installed on it via IIS6
How Can I correct this issue?
mail() on Windows needs extra config in php.ini because Windows does not have Sendmail or anything similar.
The first is the SMTP setting which should point to your ISP's outbound server which is not necessarily the same server that you retrieve your mail from. When I worked in support there were a lot of issues like you describe because an inbound server will still accept mail, but only for the domains that are local to it.
The second is the sendmail_from setting, which is what the gimpy little mailer PHP wrote for the Windows distribution uses in every SMTP transaction regardless of what's in the headers. On *nix Sendmail will read the headers and get the From: address itself, on Windows PHP will always use what's in php.ini. If this is a "garbage" address like example#example.com or something with a non-existant domain many mail servers will reject it outright. What I recommend is to change it to something decent in PHP.ini as well as adding the following line to your mailing scripts:
ini_set('sendmail_from', $from_address);
Alternatively, just use PHPmailer since it simply works much better than PHP's horrid little mail() function.
I am working on a php/c# project which is an Email Server with a web interface to manage the Email Server application.
The program is supposed to work on windows and linux but I have been mostly doing my development in windows.
I've not come onto testing in Linux and have found a horrible problem.
From what I have googled on Windows PHP you can choose an SMTP server that you want to use, but it looks as if on Linux you don't have this option so when PHP sends an email it completely bypasses my program.
Is there a way to make PHP use an SMTP server of your choice, I know you can use PEAR to overrride the SMTP settings but I'd prefer that the standard PHP mail function would work so other software like PHPBB forum would send emails via my SMTP server instead of the default php mail.
Is this something that is possible or is my only option to use pear?
You standard php mail function will just send to whatever is defined as the sendmail _path in php.ini
This is typically sendmail -t -i
You would need to configure sendmail to use smtp.
FWIW, most developer who do a lot of mail sending from PHP apps revile the mail() and instead use one of many mailing libraries (or services) which provide better configurability/reliability.
You could for example pipe the mail function to your own PHP script and use whatever library you wanted to in that script in order to do mail sending (and thus preserving the use of mail() function across applications).
I'm looking for an SMTP server that I can setup on a windows machine:
It needs to be lightweight, not loads of security settings
I only need to send email not receive it
Its needs to be able to send email from anonymous users
The reason is that I've installed Apache and PHP on a windows machine and want an SMTP server to route mails through, I plan on using this windows sendmail.exe which I have used before and works great.
Last time I did this I used sendmail.exe and Stunnel and used a gmail address, but I can't do that this time, needs to be sent from localhost.
You could use the SMTP server integrated in IIS, you could also go for smaller mail servers like http://www.xmailserver.org/ or http://www.mailenable.com/
Too bad, stunnel/gmail is great and I've used it a ton for test environments.
Two great alternatives are to install exim via Cygwin, or to use IIS as an SMTP server.
I have personally used the first with success. I have never tried IIS although I know this is a viable solution for some.
I'm building a site on my home computer using MAMP. The code I'm using employs the PHP mail() function to send emails, but whenever I test it, the mails aren't getting sent.
My computer is connected to the net, but I'm wondering if there's something about local hosting that prevents mails from getting sent. I'm not getting any kind of error message.
Any ideas?
PHP can send mail in one of two ways.
The first, and the default on non-Windows systems, is to use the local mail transfer agent installed on the system. This would be "sendmail" or an application compatible with it, the most popular probably being postfix.
The other is to connect via SMTP to some mail server.
You will either need to install a mail transfer agent on your local system (and set it up correctly), or edit PHP's configuration to specify an SMTP server address and port.
Yes, there are things that could block locally hosted mail. For one, your ISP could block SMTP to servers other than the ISP. ask your ISP support if they block SMTP... Or try telexing so someone's MX port 25 and do you get a response?
If your ISP blocks smtp you can still send the mail, but first you must relay that email through a hosted email server like your ISP mail server. This process is called 'smart hosting' and you can search for more info.
Even if you are not blocked on port 25, many sites will refuse or lose smtp traffic that originates from a dynamic or residential IP address, so again the smart host suggestion.
Also I suggest not using the built in mail() function in PHP... Use something that replaces and improves it like http://pear.php.net/package/Mail or http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmailer/. Again, use the SMTP method as it is way more reliable than direct sending or calling Sendmail.
It is important to confirm this problem, doing SMTP manually over telnet. That way you isolate the problem from PHP. I did ISP support for years and saw this question lots. Most people setup php and mail correctly but get stuck on a background network issue with SMTP.
If you have Wireshark installed, it can record network traffic and you might see the actual SMTP traffic, for example the remote server may be refusing your connection. Wireshark is helpful but not required to solve this though. Good luck.
You need to setup SMTP server in order to be able use mail function, or you can use PHPMailer class, with it you can avoid using mail function and setup problems, PHPMailler need socket extension to be loaded in order to function correctly.
I know this is possible, but can I do without a remote SMTP server or the like? Basically I want to send mail with PHP, but without mail()
I'm unsure what you exactly mean with 'without a remote SMTP server', as in any mail delivery at least one of those has to be involved - the one receiving mail on account of the recipient...
What you can probably do (it's up to you to decide if it's worth the effort) is to use PHP's socket functions to open a connection on port 25 with a remote mail server. Google 'SMTP telnet' for some examples of how a SMTP session looks like (quite simple, to be true) and then google for 'SMTP codes' for more explanations of what the remote server is saying you.
Possible, but not entirely trivial considering the fact that you should be familiar with SMTP, POP3 and/or IMAP to actually exchange data with a mail server.
You need to code your app so it mimics the behavior of an MTA, that is if you're going to do what the mail() function does - and using sockets. If you're on Linux, another option is to make an OS call to sendmail.
To not use mail() look into PHPMailer
I use this library for all my e-mailing code. I've extended it to have a debug mode so I can intercept outgoing e-mails while testing code.
I could be wrong but you will always be using an SMTP server even if that server is just the webserver with sendmail on it. If you were running your PHP on windows you'd need to enable IIS's in built SMTP service.