PHP mail() BCC - display only the end receivers address in To: header
Question
I'm attempting to BCC to a list of subscribers from a database, using PHP mail(). Everything works, but I'm running into a problem that has troubled me all morning. I'm able to send the list with BCC, but are unable to append the receiving end email address to the deader "To:".
For example, I send the list to the following email addresses (test1@example.com, test2@example.com, and test3@example.com) . Each email address receives an email and the other email addresses are hidden because of BCC.
My problem is that in the header, "To:" is displayed blank on all of the receiving ends of the list. That I understand and know that header won't display because I have only the BCC header within the outgoing message. I've attemted to for loop the process but I receive all of the emails, plus one for that address in one loop.
Here is my working code: The working code includes the loop that I attempted for solving the To: header. I'm able to send the email, though I receive all of the emails that were sent.
<?php
/*
Gathers the number of rows within the database. Used for the loop that displays the entire list in the BCC.
*/
session_start();
include_once '../dbconnect.php';
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM news");
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
$rows = $num_rows;
/*
Requests the list from the database, please the list in a loop, displays the list only once, and places list in an operator.
*/
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `news`");
while($row = mysql_fetch_array( $result )) {
for ($x = 1; $x <= 1; $x++) {
$contacts.= "".$row['email'].",";
}
}
/*
ATTEMPT (It works... sort of): Sends mail to the list using BCC, displays the ONLY receivers email address in the To: header
*/
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `news`");
while($row = mysql_fetch_array( $result )) {
for ($x = 1; $x <= 1; $x++) {
$receiver= "".$row['email']."";
$to = "$receiver";
$subject = 'Test Email';
$headers = "From: example@example.com\r\n";
$headers .= "BCC: $contacts";
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\r\n";
$message = '<html><body>';
$message .= '<h1 style="">Test Message</h1>';
$message .= '</body></html>';
mail($to,$subject, $message, $headers);
}
}
?>
My general thought was to loop, but I can't find a solution that actually solves this completely, by BBC to the list and displaying only the receiving ends email address in the To: header. Any thoughts or ideas?
Update with SMTP Server
I've been attempting to use the solution found in this thread and apply it to an SMTP server. Send the message using SendGrid was the ideal choice. I've come up with the below option, but the script only seems to send one message to one of the addresses in the database and not all the address.
<?php
require_once "Mail.php";
$sub = $_POST['subject'];
$ttl = $_POST['title'];
$img = $_POST['image'];
$bdy = $_POST['body'];
$lk = $_POST['link'];
mysql_connect("", "", "") or die(mysql_error()) ;
mysql_select_db("") or die(mysql_error()) ;
$result = mysql_query("SELECT `email` FROM news");
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
$receivers = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$receivers[] = $row['email'];
}
foreach ($receivers as $receiver) { }
$from = "test@example.com";
$to = $receiver;
$subject = $sub;
$mime = "1.0";
$ctype = "text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1";
$body = '
<html><body>
<p>Test Message!</p>
</body></html>
';
$host = "";
$port = "";
$username = "";
$password = "";
$headers = array ('From' => $from,
'To' => $to,
'Subject' => $subject,
'MIME-Version' => $mime ,
'Content-Type:' => $ctype);
$smtp = Mail::factory('smtp',
array ('host' => $host,
'port' => $port,
'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>");
}
?>
2 answers
solution1
2 ACCPTED 2016-01-03 11:24:55
The code includes some general improvements to your code. I have added inline comments to explain what I have done.
<?php
// General thing: If you do not need a session, do not start one ;)
session_start();
include_once '../dbconnect.php';
// Select only what you really need from the table. This saves you memory
// and it speeds up the query.
$result = mysql_query("SELECT `email` FROM news");
// You are not using these numbers in the script you showed us. I am just
// leaving them in here to show you, how you can reuse the "$result"
// variable without querying the database again.
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
// We are reusing the "$result" here without re-querying the database, which
// speeds the whole process up and takes load away from the database. We are
// storing all receivers in a dedicated variable, to reuse them later on.
$receivers = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$receivers[] = $row['email'];
}
// Now, instead of querying the database again, we are using our stored mail
// addresses in "$receivers" to send the emails one by one. We could have
// done this part in the "while" loop before, but I wanted to stay close to
// your code, so you would recognize it ;)
foreach ($receivers as $receiver) {
// I have removed the "for" loop here, because it runs only once. If a loop
// only runs once and you control all its input, you really do not need a
// loop at all (except some exceptions, just in case someone knows one^^).
// You can actually just put the value of $receiver in $to. PHP is pretty
// good at typecasting of scalar types (integers, strings etc.), so you do
// not need to worry about that.
$to = $receiver;
$subject = 'Test Email';
// I am putting the headers into an array and implode them later on. This
// way we can make sure that we are not forgetting the new line characters
// somewhere.
$headers = array(
"From: example@example.com",
"MIME-Version: 1.0",
"Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1",
// I have removed the "BCC" header here, because this loops send out an
// email to each user seperately. It is basically me sending an email to
// you. Afterwards I copy&paste all the content to another new mail and
// send it to another fella. You would never know that you both got the
// same mail ;)
);
$message = '<html><body>';
$message .= '<h1 style="">Test Message</h1>';
$message .= '</body></html>';
// Imploding the headers.
$imploded_headers = implode("\r\n", $headers);
mail($to, $subject, $message, $imploded_headers);
}
This code basically send out one email at a time. No one who receives such an email knows which email addresses the email went to.
As mentioned in the code, this snippet can be further optimized. Since email sending itself is a pretty difficult area, I would really suggest that you find some PHP library that bundles that whole thing and work with it. You can make so many mistakes with the whole email sending thing, that I would not run a script like that in production if you do not want to get marked as spam soon after.
solution2
1 2016-01-03 11:00:39
Add \\r\\n to:
$headers .= "BCC: $contacts\r\n";
Each header must be on new line.
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