Is it possible to manipulate the date header using PHP's mail function/sendmail (website server is linux so I believe it's using sendmail underneath)?
I'm trying to test error handling of a (windows based) email checker, and need to generate an invalid date header in a message, but when I send my message using php mail, even though I am including a custom Date header, it seems to get overridden by the mail server and my custom header ignored. I'm guessing I might need an additional parameter for sendmail to tamper with that header, but I can't seem to find what that parameter would be, or whether this is even possible.
Here is what I am sending (with the personal domain info removed)
$headers = "From: ..................\r\n";
$headers .= "Message-ID: <" . md5(uniqid(time())) . "#..................>\n";
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
//$headers .= "Date: ".date("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " UT\n"; //a valid header for comparison
$headers .= "Date: Tuesday\n"; // intentionally bogus email header
$headers .= "Reply-To: ..................\n";
$headers .= "Return-Path: ..................\r\n";
$headers .= "X-Priority: 3\r\nX-MSMail-Priority: Normal\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP/".phpversion()."\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\n";
$headers .= "\n";
$success=mail($to, $s_subject, $s_emailmsg, $headers);
Assuming you wrote an email checker that runs via procmail, an easier way might be to construct an email message yourself and send that directly to the test script via standard input.
It's easier to write unit tests that way as it bypasses any interference by other mail servers. When you do follow this, make sure that the first line starts with MAIL FROM xx#yy.com.
Related
I am currently having struggle sending an email from php:
$header = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$header .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8\r\n";
$header .= "From: jan#XXX.at\r\n";
$header .= "Reply-To: jan#XXX.at\r\n";
$header .= "X-Mailer: PHP " . phpversion();
mail("receiver#yyy.at", "Subject", "Body", $header);
The Problem is that on receiver side, the mail has the following sender adress:
xxx#hostname.at where hostname.at is the host the PHP script runs on.
xxx.at gets replaced by hostname.at all the time. I'm running Plesk and PHP 8.0.3. Any ideas?
Turned out that plesk has a feature called "Fix incorrectly set sender for outgoing mail under Tools & Settings > Mail Server.
unchecked that, works.
I have read that i must include some headers when using mail() function in PHP like:
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=UTF-8" . "\r\n";
but in my case i want only to send text, not html. so are those headers will still be required to make a successful mail?
Headers of mail() function are optional.
Your email can be delivered successfully, without any header.
Note that some default values will be set. As an example, if you do not declare a sender (From), the server name will be used instead.
I have a problem with a mailing application I'm currently developing with php on a linux server. After sending an email to a bunch of different addresses with different clients on it, sometimes these mails can't be read by the receivers.
For example the body appears to start with this:
boundary="=_2cac04098ebf51c342bd57eab2200e38"
Message-ID: <lo5huc.id4ip6qutsch.lforce.de>
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 06:01:24 +0200 (CEST)
--=_2cac04098ebf51c342bd57eab2200e38
I really have no clue what's happening to my mails. Each line in the header is separated by \n, the boundary entry has a leading \t. Though the client seems to read a line break which is not there while parsing my header. It also happens in other parts of the header.
Has anyone ever had a similar problem? Please help me!
Andy
UPDATE: I'm pretty sure it's no coding error. I've been coding this mail stuff for years (even wrote my own mail client) and it worked perfectly. Right now we use the RMAIL class which is also from a bigger open source project. I think it's more like a problem with my system configuration... but that's just a guess.
Make sure you seperate every header line correctly, for instance:
<?php
//To send HTML mail, the Content-type header must be set
$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
// Additional headers
$headers .= 'To: Mary <mary#example.com>, Kelly <kelly#example.com>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: Birthday Reminder <birthday#example.com>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Cc: birthdayarchive#example.com' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Bcc: birthdaycheck#example.com' . "\r\n";
// Mail it
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>
I suggest using PHPMailer, easy to use, takes care of all nesseccery headers, easy attachment sending, multiple recipients etc.
http://phpmailer.worxware.com/index.php?pg=phpmailer
I need a set of mail headers to attach to my mail() function in PHP. I send emails with HTML in them, and sometimes services like Yahoo Mail block them. Therefore I need to make sure that I am at least providing the right headers.
My code:
// To send HTML mail, the 'Content-type' header must be set
$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
// Additional headers
$headers .= 'From: MyCompany <welcome#mycompany.com>' . "\r\n";
Is there anything else I should add?
$headers = "From: testsite <mail#testsite.com>\n";
$headers .= "Cc: testsite <mail#testsite.com>\n";
$headers .= "X-Sender: testsite <mail#testsite.com>\n";
$headers .= 'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
$headers .= "X-Priority: 1\n"; // Urgent message!
$headers .= "Return-Path: mail#testsite.com\n"; // Return path for errors
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n";
Most MUA's insert a lot of extra headers; however, here is sort of the bare minimum you can expect.
To:
Subject:
Date:
MIME-Version:
Content-type:
If you using HTML, then you should probably be using multipart messages--but it's not strictly necessary.
When defining if a sender is a possible spammer, many services check if the domain of the sender looks like a dialup user.
Quote from Wikipedia:
One e-mail anti-spam technique:
checking the domain names in the rDNS
to see if they are likely from dialup
users, dynamically assigned addresses,
or other inexpensive internet
services. Owners of such IP addresses
typically assign them generic rDNS
names such as
"1-2-3-4-dynamic-ip.example.com."
Since the vast majority, but by no
means all, of e-mail that originates
from these computers is spam, many
spam filters refuse e-mail with such
rDNS names.
Did the mail really come from 'mycompany.com'? I've had problems with some mail services blocking if it didn't really come from the SMTP server that the mail says it does.
A way around this, for me, was making the from to be automail#mydomainnaim.com and adding a reply-to, being the person who sent the mail using my system.
PHP 7.2+ solution
In current versions of PHP it is possible to pass an array of headers to mail() (as mentioned in the PHP docs), so the code could look a little cleaner. (Sablefoste mentioned this in their comment on the current top answer.)
In case anybody is interested, it could look like this:
$headers = [
'From' => 'testsite <mail#testsite.com>',
'Cc' => 'testsite <mail#testsite.com>',
'X-Sender' => 'testsite <mail#testsite.com>',
'X-Mailer' => 'PHP/' . phpversion(),
'X-Priority' => '1',
'Return-Path' => 'mail#testsite.com',
'MIME-Version' => '1.0',
'Content-Type' => 'text/html; charset=iso-8859-1'
];
mail('recipient#host.com', 'My subject', 'My message', $headers);
The RFCs for both IMF and MIME define the minimal set of headers, so this would be a good place to start.
For IMF, look here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322#section-3.6
For MIME, look here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2045#section-3
The link below could be of some use defining the mandatory headers as:
Date:
The date the message was originated/written.
From:
The person "responsible" for the message.
I have a website in which I send a confirmation mail as part of the registration process.
Some time ago, I had some troubles with the mails I sent since I used no headers (PHP mail function).
Once I put some headers, I've gotten more responses from users, but I suspect that not every message reaches its destination.
How can I be sure that the messages reach their destination?
Which are the headers that can be considered a 'must'?
This is the code of my SendMail function
mail($to,
$subject,
$message,
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n".
"Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowder\n".
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n".
"Message-Id: <" . md5(uniqid(microtime())) . "#mysite.com>\n".
"Return-Path: <admin#mysite.com>\n".
"X-Mailer: PHP v".phpversion()."\n".
"From: admin# mysite.com");
You should use external library for working with e-mails in php like PhpMailer , SwiftMailer or Zend_Mail. All your problems will go away.
The headers need a white space at the bottom to separate the header from main body.
Tools like Spam Assassin will give you a big mark down for that.
Also you should use \r\n as a line terminator instead of just \n
From PHP.net
Multiple extra headers should be separated with a CRLF (\r\n).
The headers seems quite good to me. The only glitch I see is an extra whitespace in the From header.
I'm sure you already checked it, but just in case ...
"From: admin# mysite.com");
should be (?)
"From: admin#mysite.com");
This is a working mail function I'm using for html mail and variable $return is defined to get error report from mail server in case of fail delivery.
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: <'.$from.'>' . "\r\n";
$return = '-f'.$from;
#mail($to, $subject, $msg, $headers, $return);
you can see more detail at here sugunan.com
The headers look ok, except for the details pointed by #Eineki. Also if you are using Windows you need to send the $to param in the form "user#mail.com" and not "Username ", because it may cause trouble, due to the way the mail() function is implemented on windows platform, the "to" address may be parsed incorrectly.
You should add a Date: header (its mandatory by RFC5322) and some mail-clients may assume January 1 1970 as an e-mail date if none is given (and it gets lost between all the other old messages).