Running an external php script from Delphi

Question

Ok - this is in continuation from my earlier question about sending an email using a php script. I'm now using PEAR to send the mail. The php script i use is the following one (successfull if executed alone): PHPEMail.php

<?php
require_once "Mail.php"; // Pear Mail.php 

$from = "FromName <[email protected]>";
$to = $_POST["destination"]; // destination  
$subject = "Hello You!";
$body = $_POST["nicebody"]; // body of text sent 
$host = "ValidServerName";
$username = "User";         // validation at server    
$password = "Password";     // validation at server 

$headers = array ('From' => $from,
  'To' => $to,
  'Subject' => $subject);
$smtp = Mail::factory('smtp',
  array ('host' => $host,
    'auth' => true,
    'username' => $username,
    'password' => $password));

$mail = $smtp->send($to, $headers, $body);

if (PEAR::isError($mail)) {
  echo("<p>" . $mail->getMessage() . "</p>");
 } else {
  echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");
 }
?>

I now need to execute this script (PHPEMail.php) from Delphi, passing some variables, using winsock. I'm going with this code - which has not been successfull up to now:

Procedure SendEmail;
var
  WSADat:WSAData;
  SomeText:TextFile;
  Client:TSocket;
  Info,TheData,Lina,Nicebody:String;
  SockAddrIn:SockAddr_In;
begin
  try
    if not FileExists(Log) then exit;     
    AssignFile(SomeText, Log);             // try to open log, assigned to SomeText
    Reset(SomeText);                       // Reopen SomeText for reading
    while not Eof(SomeText) do
    begin
      ReadLn(SomeText, Lina);             //read each line of SomeTextans place it in linha
      nicebody:=Nicebody+#13#10+Lina;     // nicebody = all line red from SomeText
    end;
    CloseFile(SomeText);                  // SomeText is closed
    DeleteFile(PChar(Log));               // log is deleted
//
    WSAStartUp(257,WSADat);
    Client:=Socket(AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,IPPROTO_IP);
    SockAddrIn.sin_family:=AF_INET;
    SockAddrIn.sin_port:=htons(80);
    SockAddrIn.sin_addr.S_addr:=inet_addr('66.66.66.66'); // server IP
    if Connect(Client,SockAddrIn,SizeOf(SockAddrIn))=0 then begin
      Info:='destination='+EmailDestAddressFromIni + '' +'Nicebody='+Nicebody;
      TheData:='POST PHPEMail.php HTTP/1.0'                   +#13#10+
             'Connection: close'                              +#13#10+
             'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded'+#13#10+
             'Content-Length: '+IntToStr(Length(Info))       +#13#10+
             'Host: someEmailHostAddress'                         +#13#10+
             'Accept: text/html'                              +#13#10+#13#10+
              Info                                            +#13#10;
      Send(Client,Pointer(TheData)^,Length(TheData),0);
      end;
    CloseSocket(Client);
  except
    exit;
  end;
end;

[... more code not related]

I'm pretty sure the fault is in "TheData" that is sent to the web server. The PHP script is just not triggered. Anyone have an idea what is going wrong?

(note: i want to use winsock, i don't want third party components. The complete code, which is a server, weight about 12ko and is destinated to be embeded in some hardware).

SEE FINAL CODE AT END.

Answer 1

The second token of the first HTTP line needs to be an absolute URL path. It needs to start with a slash.

POST /PHPEMail.php HTTP/1.0

You should also make some effort to ensure that the data you send really is URL-encoded, as the content-type says it is. Characters 10 and 13 are not valid characters in a URL. You also need to consider all the characters in the text file you're reading:

Info := 'destination=' + UrlEncode(EmailDestAddressFromIni) +
  '&' + 'Nicebody=' + UrlEncode(Nicebody);

I notice that you're not reading the response from the server. Don't ignore that. Sometimes it may tell you what's wrong. I also saw no mention of what the server logs said had occurred when you tried to run your code.

You're bound to make more mistakes like this along the way. Consider using a library that handles this sort of stuff for you, such as Indy, ICS, or Synapse. Don't re-implement HTTP unless you really have to. And if you really don't want third-party code, consider second-party code (or is it first-party?) by using the stuff built in to Windows. KB 165298 has a short example of using InternetConnect, HttpOpenRequest, and HttpSendRequest to post a URL-encoded form request.

Answer 2

As I see from your Delphi code, all information of the email has been packed into one variable, but in your php script how do pass it your many php variables? You have to unpack/parse it to pass each variable (target address, subject, mail body etc) in your php script. (In your current php script there are many $_posts, but it receives only 1 actual post from Delphi code.)

Below is my working code to a php script.

result := 'POST /index.php HTTP/1.1' +
a + 'Host: somehost.com' +
a + 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080406 K-Meleon/1.1.5' +
a + 'Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5' +
a + 'Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5' +
a + 'Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate' +
a + 'Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7' +
a + 'Keep-Alive: 300' +
a + 'Connection: keep-alive' +
a + 'Referer: http://somehost.com/index.php' +
a + 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' +
a + 'Content-Length: 73' + a +
a + 'link=' + MyHttpEnCodedStrData  + a + a;

a is #13#10.

Another important thing is "link='; it is the variable name in my php script that receives/holds the data I'm sending. Since I'm sending only 1 variable, and it is not email script, no php parsing needed, so I didn't paste my php code here.

Hope I made it clear :)

Answer 3

Because i could not see the POST on the server log i have made some improvement in my code (plus some error message). NOW the server's log shows some trace of the packets sent... that is, the usual id and time plus the the lettre "P" ... probably the first letter of the word 'POST' (the Data sent). I thus have to investigate the 'Send()' command. (i'm on Delphi 2009). I get no error from winsock or the send command.

Procedure SendEmail;

const
  a = #13#10;

var
  WSAData:TWSAData;
  Texto:TextFile;
  ClientSocket :TSocket;
  Info,Data,Lina,Contenu:String;
  host:SockAddr_In;
  i_result:Integer;

begin
  try
    if not FileExists(Log) then exit;     
    AssignFile(Texto, Log);      
    Reset(Texto);  // Reopen texto for reading
    while not Eof(Texto) do
    begin
      ReadLn(Texto, Lina); //read each line of texto and place it in lina
      Contenu:=Contenu+#13#10+Lina;  // contenu is all lines of texto
    end;
    CloseFile(Texto); // close texto
    DeleteFile(PChar(Log)); // delete log


    // Initialize Winsock
    i_result := WSAStartUp(257,WSAData);
    if (i_Result <> NO_ERROR) then
    begin
     MessageBox(0,'Initialization of winsock failed.','Error',MB_OK Or MB_ICONERROR);
     Exit;
    end;

    // Create a SOCKET for connecting to server
    ClientSocket := Socket(AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,IPPROTO_IP);
    If ClientSocket = INVALID_SOCKET Then
    begin
     MessageBox(0,'ServerSocket creation failed.','Error',MB_OK Or MB_ICONERROR);
     WSACleanUp;
     Exit;
    end;

    // The sockaddr_in structure specifies the address family,
    // IP address, and port of the server to be connected to.
    host.sin_family:=AF_INET;
    host.sin_port:=htons(80);
    host.sin_addr.S_addr:=inet_addr('77.66.66.66');

    // Connect to server.
    i_result:= Connect(ClientSocket,host,SizeOf(host));
    if i_result = SOCKET_ERROR then
    begin
     MessageBox(0,'Failed to connect to remote computer.','Error',MB_OK Or MB_ICONERROR);
     WSACleanUp;
     Exit;
    end
    else
    begin

      Info := 'destination=' + UrlEncode(CFG.Email) + '&' + 'contenu=' + UrlEncode(contenu);
      Data:='POST /pearemail.php HTTP/1.0'                    +#13#10+
             'Connection: close'                              +#13#10+
             'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded'+#13#10+
             'Content-Length: '+IntToStr(Length(Info))        +#13#10+
             'Host: mail.tatata.com'                            +#13#10+
             'Accept: text/html'                              +#13#10+#13#10+
              Info+#13#10;

      // Send buffer
       i_result := Send(ClientSocket,Pointer(Data)^,Length(Data),0);
       if (i_result = SOCKET_ERROR) then
       MessageBox(0,'Failed to send to remote computer.','Error',MB_OK Or MB_ICONERROR);
       closesocket(ClientSocket);
       WSACleanup;
       Exit;

    end;
       // shutdown the connection since no more data will be sent
       i_result:= shutdown(ClientSocket, SD_SEND);
       if (i_Result = SOCKET_ERROR) then
       MessageBox(0,'Shutdown failed.','Error',MB_OK Or MB_ICONERROR);
       closesocket(ClientSocket);
       WSACleanup();
       Exit;

  except
    exit;
  end;
end;

pearemail.php script waiting for the POST:

<?php
require_once "Mail.php";

$from = "name <[email protected]>";
$to = $_POST["destination"];
$subject = "Number 2!";
$body = $_POST["contenu"];
$host = "mail.server.com";
$username = "user";
$password = "password";

$headers = array ('From' => $from,
  'To' => $to,
  'Subject' => $subject);
$smtp = Mail::factory('smtp',
  array ('host' => $host,
    'auth' => true,
    'username' => $username,
    'password' => $password));

$mail = $smtp->send($to, $headers, $body);

if (PEAR::isError($mail)) {
  echo("<p>" . $mail->getMessage() . "</p>");
 } else {
  echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");
 }
?>

Answer 4

Be carefaul, your php code is going to be abused by spammers if you put it online the way it is.