Sending form results to your e-mail address

Sending e-mails in PHP is quite trivial, all you need to do is use the mail() function. The syntax is:

mail(RECIPIENT, SUBJECT, MESSAGE [, HEADERS]);

First three parameters are required, headers are optional. Here is an example to make things more clear. If you want to send an e-mail with subject "Test e-mail" and message "Hi, this is a test message!" to address "john@doe.com" the code would look like:

mail("john@doe.com", "Test e-mail", "Hi, this is a test message!");

It is usually more practical to store recipient, subject and message in variables then typing them directly inside mail(). This is especially true if you have a long subject and message.

Also when you are sending e-mail don't forget to display a response confirming the form has been submitted ("thank you" page).

<?php
$recipient = "you@yourdomain.com";
$subject   = "This is a test e-mail";
$message   = "Hi!

This is a test message (e-mail body).
This is a new line

Enough for now.
Best regards,

Test test
";

mail($recipient, $subject, $message);
?>
<html>
<body>

Your message was successfully sent!<br />
<br />
Thank you for contacting us!

</body>
</html>

Instead of printing the response HTML code you can create a separate thank you page ("thank_you.html") and redirect the visitor after mail() by printing a 'Location:' header:

header('Location:thank_you.html');

...or use the full URL to thank_you.html:

header('Location:http://www.domain.com/thank_you.html');

So the above code would look like:

<?php
$recipient = "you@yourdomain.com";
$subject   = "This is a test e-mail";
$message   = "Hi!

This is a test message (e-mail body).
This is a new line

Enough for now.
Best regards,

Test test
";

mail($recipient, $subject, $message);

header('Location:thank_you.html');
?>

On the next page we will put everything we learned together and create the final version of our contact form.

<< Validating URL and E-mail

Putting it all together >>

Jump to:

1.1	PHP forms tutorial
1.2	Validating forms with PHP
1.3	Required and optional fields
1.4	Validating URL and E-mail
1.5	Form to mail
1.6	Putting it all together
1.7	Final words and further reading

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