PHP mail via SMTP

Depending on your server setup, you may find yourself needing to take closer control of how mail is sent from your site.

Below is a drop-in replacement for PHP’s mail() function which uses the Mail::send function from PEAR internally.

function pear_mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers="") {
    require_once("Mail.php");
    function split_headers( $headers )
    {
        $header_array = array();
        $lines = explode("\n",$headers);
        foreach ($lines as $line) {
            $kv = explode(":",$line,2);
            if (!empty($kv[1])) {
                $header_array[trim($kv[0])] = trim($kv[1]);
            }
        }
        return $header_array;
    }

    $mailer = Mail::factory('smtp',array('host'=>'127.0.0.1','port'=>'25'));
    $header_list = split_headers($headers);
    $header_list['Subject'] = $subject;
    return $mailer->send($to,$header_list,$message);
}

$headers = "From:sender@example.com\r\nContent-type:text/plain";

# Both functions take the exact same parameters making it very easy to 
# substitute one for the other

mail     ("recipient@example.com","Example Mail","Test Send",$headers);
pear_mail("recipient@example.com","Example Mail","Test Send",$headers);

This will only work if you have PEAR’s Mail and Net_SMTP packages installed. Also, you need to make sure you explicitly set a “From:” header.

But other than that, you can simply include this code somewhere and then do a global search-and-replace for all instances of mail( and replace them with pear_mail( and you’re in business.