sending Email through an SMTP server?

omegaorion

I would like to connect to an external SMTP server and send mail through that account. Neither the Mail function nore the IMAP functions appear to be able to do this. Is there ANYTHING that can do it in PHP? it's quite aggravating. My site is being ported over from asp to php and our forms send a formatted email when submitted. I need to reproduce this functionality exactly(NO workarounds, we will be using a MySQL database soon, but for now I need to have this email thing working). Our mail server is still going to be Microsoft based so that rules out any possibilty (as far as I can tell) of anything else but connecting to the SMTP server much as an email program does to send mail.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

royheath

You need to edit your php.ini file. The following is from the mail() function section of the manual.

Mail Configuration Directives

SMTP string
DNS name or IP address of the SMTP server PHP under Windows should use for mail sent with the mail() function.

sendmail_from string
Which "From:" mail address should be used in mail sent from PHP under Windows.

If it's any consolation, I'm having problems getting mail to send from a unix box my own self.

reagent

you'd need to open a socket to your mail relay and send the commands through there (if you're using unix), otherwise i think this solution will work.

i have done this myself, but my sample code is not as complete as i'd like it to be.

check the code snippets section for mailer classes that will do this and more, it's well worth it, esp since the mail() function does not do everything you'd want it to (i.e. add the Return-Path: header correctly)