PHP Validate Email Address: Email Validator

When working with forms and interacting with your visitors, you may want to verify if your visitor entered an email address in the right field, and if it is valide or not.

Most of people who are new to php world, just verify if the text box of the email address is filled or not, without verifying the syntax of the email address...

Something like this they use:

if (isset($_POST['email'])) {
// do something
}

But when you want to develop a php website in the best way, taking care of all little details, you should think what happens when your user does make a mistake in the email address, writing something like this: his_email@gmailcom, or his_emailgmail.com or even he writes ssdfsff (like many people do), I'm sure you would like to inform him and ask him to correct his email address, you maybe also want to check if the domain name of his email address is valid, you can't accept an email like this: blahblah@dfsjhbhjjqsdqq.fdf .

So here is the php script I think you should use everytime you have a form with 'email address' input :

<?php
function validate_email($email) {

   //check for all the non-printable codes in the standard ASCII set,
   //including null bytes and newlines, and exit immediately if any are found.
   if (preg_match("/[\\000-\\037]/",$email)) {
      return false;
   }
   $pattern = "/^[-_a-z0-9\'+*$^&%=~!?{}]++(?:\.[-_a-z0-9\'+*$^&%=~!?{}]+)*+@(?:(?![-.])[-a-z0-9.]+(?<![-.])\.[a-z]{2,6}|\d{1,3}(?:\.\d{1,3}){3})(?::\d++)?$/iD";
   if(!preg_match($pattern, $email)){
      return false;
   }
   // Validate the domain exists with a DNS check
   // if the checks cannot be made (soft fail over to true)
   list($user,$domain) = explode('@',$email);
   if( function_exists('checkdnsrr') ) {
      if( !checkdnsrr($domain,"MX") ) { // Linux: PHP 4.3.0 and higher & Windows: PHP 5.3.0 and higher
         return false;
      }
   }
   else if( function_exists("getmxrr") ) {
      if ( !getmxrr($domain, $mxhosts) ) {
         return false;
      }
   }
   return true;
} // end function validate_email
?>
 

Now you can use this function with the email address you want to verify as parameter, and it will return you true if it valide and false if it is not.
This nice function will not know if an email exist really or not, it just verifies the syntax and the domain name, for example will not know that qsddsfqsdsdfqsdsqdsqd@gmail.com is not valide, but knows that qsqsdsq@dfsfsqdqsdqd.com is an invalid email address .

I hope this help you a lot.
Please leave comments or link to us if you think this is usefull :)

PHP send mail SMTP authentification

this is a very complete php send mail script, with authentification ofcourse.
You can choose the smtp server, use your username and password, and can send a html email.

This script does not use php mail() function, it's all from scrach.

function authSendEmail($from, $namefrom, $to, $nameto, $subject, $message)
{

$smtpServer = "smtpout.europe.secureserver.net";
$port = "25";
$timeout = "30";
$username = "username@mailserver.com";
$password = "mypassword";
$localhost = "localhost"; //hosting server
$newLine = "\r\n";

$smtpConnect = fsockopen($smtpServer, $port, $errno, $errstr, $timeout);
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);
if(empty($smtpConnect))
{
$output = "Failed to connect: $smtpResponse";
return false;
} else {
$logArray['connection'] = "Connected: $smtpResponse";
}

//Request Auth Login

fputs($smtpConnect,"AUTH LOGIN" . $newLine);

$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

//Send username

fputs($smtpConnect, base64_encode($username) . $newLine);
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

//Send password
fputs($smtpConnect, base64_encode($password) . $newLine);
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

//Say Hello to SMTP
fputs($smtpConnect, "HELO $localhost" . $newLine);
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

//Email From
fputs($smtpConnect, "MAIL FROM: $from" . $newLine);
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

//Email To
fputs($smtpConnect, "RCPT TO: $to" . $newLine);
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

//The Email
fputs($smtpConnect, "DATA" . $newLine);
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

//Construct Headers
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . $newLine;
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" . $newLine;
//Add these two lines if you have any problem
//$headers .= "To: $nameto <$to>" . $newLine;
//$headers .= "From: $namefrom <$from>" . $newLine;

fputs($smtpConnect, "To: $nameto <$to>\nFrom: $namefrom <$from>\nSubject: $subject\n$headers\n\n$message\n.\n");
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

// Say Bye to SMTP
fputs($smtpConnect, "QUIT" . $newLine);
$smtpResponse = fgets($smtpConnect, 515);

return true;
}

?>

That's it, just copy this mail SMTP authentification function and change configuration variables values to your own (smtpserver, port, username, password, ...).

PHP send HTML email, The complete php mail sending script

The last post by me was about a very easy way to send an email with php. But as it is simple, it will only send text email, not html.

If you want a complete mail sending script, that send in html, this is what you have to use:

<?php
//here the receiver of the email
$to = 'receiver@example.com';
//here the subject of the email
$subject = 'Test HTML email';
//create a boundary string. It must be unique
//so we use the MD5 algorithm to generate a random hash
$random_hash = md5(date('r', time()));
//define the headers we want passed. Note that they are separated with \r\n
$headers = "From: myemail@mysite.com\r\nReply-To: myemail@mysite.com";
//add boundary string and mime type specification
$headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"PHP-alt-".$random_hash."\"";
//define the body of the message.
$message ='
--PHP-alt-'.$random_hash.'
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<h2>Hello World!</h2>
<p>This is something with <b>HTML</b> formatting.</p>

--PHP-alt-'.$random_hash.'--';

//send the email
$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );
//if the message is sent successfully print "Mail sent". Otherwise print "Mail failed"
echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed";
?>

The script is with comments, to tell you what exactly each instruction does :)

So as you see, we added:
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
to the message body ($message), this way the mail client of the receiver will know that the email is in html.

There are also few other changements that are nor really very necessary like the boundary string, but it is better to use them :)

PHP mail() - send email with php

Sending email with php is very simple, few lines of code and it works.
You need to send email using php when you have a comment or contact us form, where your visitors contact you via a web page form, and you get the message to your email address, or when you have a signup / registration form and you want to send automatically a confirmation link or a welcome message to your new users.

This is how you send email using php:

<?php
$TO = "someone@something.com";
$h  = "From: me@mywebsite.com";
$message = "my message here";
mail($TO, $subject, $message, $h);
Header("Location: http://mysite.com/thankyou.html");
?>

That's it ! mail() function have 3 required parameters and one optional.
$To is the receiver email address, $subject is the subject and $message is the body of your message.
$h is optional, is the header you will send, it contains the sender email address ("FROM: me@mysite.com")

I will post next how to send a html email, and how to use SMTP Authentication which means how to choose the smtp server and use your username and password to use that server.