PHP mail not working in one script, but does in another

Question

I have a small php mailer script within a php file that works fine and sends mail fine:

$subject = "subject"; 
$mail_body = "mail body";
$name = "noreply";
$email = "[email protected]";
$recipient = "[email protected]";
$header = "From: ". $name . " <" . $email . ">\r\n";
mail($recipient, $subject, $mail_body, $header);

However, if I take this out and make it its own file, or put it into a different file, it doesn't work. There are no error messages and email is not sent.

There are no php ini set commands and no included php files.

Any ideas on why it works in the larger php script, but doesn't work on its own?

Answer 1

Everything is OK with your code. I tested it by only replacing the email address in $recipient with my address and it worked fine (I tested it with my corporate email - Outlook on Exchange server and another test with an Hotmail address - both worked fine and reached my inbox).

• But make sure that new lines in $mail_body are "\n" and not "\r\n". As you can read in the docs about the message parameter:

Each line should be separated with a LF (\n). Lines should not be larger than 70 characters.

• Make sure $name and $email does not contain forbidden characters like <, >, and new lines (\r, \n, or \r\n). As Michael points out new lines in there can lead to email injection attacks. You don't want your contact form to be used as a mail platform by spammers!

You should consider using an email library like PHPMailer which will ease your development since mail() is quite tricky for advanced mailing. Most of these libraries already cover these attacks and standards...