PHP Sendmail Setup with SMTP IIS and Windows Servers

Did you had problems setting up PHP on a Windows server which is running IIS and also running a SMTP server inside IIS? Have you faced problems sending mail from PHP scripts running on IIS server with IIS SMTP engine? By default IIS doesn’t allow relaying SMTP mails if it comes from 3rd party products. So this problem is related to IIS SMTP “Relay Restrictions”. Sometimes some of my clients are using PHP on windows servers using IIS 6 as the web server. In linux PHP supports native sendmail system from the OS itself. But in windows you need to tweak your way to make PHP able to send out mail from localhost. If you are a .Net developer, you might already know that from ASP.Net codes or even Classic Asp code it’s just as simple as 1,2,3 to send out email or use the IIS local SMTP server. Let me make it simple for you, so that you guys can make use of the localhost server from PHP.

Here are the stuff needed to do :

1 – Install and Configure IIS with PHP:

First of all install and configure PHP 5 as described in the PHP documentation. Try to avoid the windows based binary installer. Download the full package and install it manually.

2 – Test out PHP Pages:

Once you’ve done with the installation. Test it out with a sample php info page. If PHP is able to execute the pages on the server then we are ready for the next step.

3 – Test email sending from PHP:

Now we need a test script to check whether we are able to send email using PHP. Here is a sample script that will aid you out in this situation. Copy the content from this code and save it as email_test.php at your server root. Then try to run the file online (eg. mydomain.com/email_test.php) if it’s returns “not ok” means you are not able to send email out. You can change the ‘user@mydomain.com’ into your email address so that you can receive the mail if it’s a success.

Contents of email_test.php:

if(mail('user@mydomain.com','test subject','test message')){
echo('ok');
}
else{
echo('not ok');
}
?>

4 – Configure PHP.INI for SMTP:

Lets stop IIS from the IIS Manager. Now open your PHP.INI file. It could be on your C:PHP folder or C:WINDOWS folder. Depends on how you’ve configured IIS and PHP on your system. Once you’ve opened the PHP.INI file with notepad or something, search for the entry called “[mail function]” and set it as below.

Save and close the PHP.INI file.

5 – Configure IIS SMTP Relay Restrictions:

Once you’re done with PHP.INI, head over to Internet Information Services Manager. Assume that the IIS is running SMTP server also to send out email. You should be able to see the entry inside IIS manager stated “Default SMTP Virtual Server” or similar items. Now right click and access the properties page from “Default SMTP Virtual Server” as it’s shown below.

on the properties page move to “Access” tab and click on “Connection” and you will be able to see which server/IP’s are allowed to make connection to the server. If “127.0.0.1” IP is not there on the list, add it using the “Add” button, additionally you may also insert your server IP on the list.

Once you are done at the “Connections” window, click on OK button to accept the information. Now Click on “Relay” button at the “Access” tab and setup the relay options for the server. Grant the IP’s allowed to relay out mail for the mail server. Make sure “localhost” and IP “127.0.0.1” are granted for relay, addition to that you can also insert your domain name and IP.

Once you are done with “Relay Restrictions” window, click ok to accept the options and then click “Apply” and “Ok” button respectively to go back to the main screen of IIS Manager.
Now you can restart IIS from IIS manager.

6 – Try sending email again:

Now for your testing run the email_test.php file again. It should give you the response “ok“. If it’s not please check your SMTP configuration one more time along with PHP server settings and PHP.INI file.

How To Set the Image dpi to 300 in PHP

<?php
//Get jpeg image contents
ob_start();
imagejpeg($image, "", 100);
$image = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
//Or read jpeg image
$image = file_get_contents($file);
//Replace header image info to set DPI as units and the density for X and Y
//First parameter are units for X and Y densities (0x00 No units, 0x01 DPI, 0x02 DPC)
//Second parameter is the X density
//Third parameter is the Y density
$image = substr_replace($image, pack("Cnn", 0x01, 300, 300), 13, 5);
header("Content-type: image/jpeg");
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($file).'"'); 

echo $image;?>

How to Convert image to string in PHP

I have been looking to send the output from GD to a text string without proxying via a file or to a browser.

I have come up with a solution.

This code buffers the output between the ob_start() and ob_end() functions into ob_get_contents()



See the example below

<?php
// Create a test source image for this example
$im = imagecreatetruecolor(300, 50);
$text_color = imagecolorallocate($im, 233, 14, 91);
imagestring($im, 1, 5, 5,  'A Simple Text String', $text_color);

// start buffering
ob_start();
// output jpeg (or any other chosen) format & quality
imagejpeg($im, NULL, 85);
// capture output to string
$contents = ob_get_contents();
// end capture
ob_end_clean();

// be tidy; free up memory
imagedestroy($im);

// lastly (for the example) we are writing the string to a file
$fh = fopen("./temp/img.jpg", "a+" );
    fwrite( $fh, $contents );
fclose( $fh );
?> 

PHP: Sending Email (Text/HTML/Attachments)

Email is the most popular Internet service today. A plenty of emails are sent and delivered each day. The goal of this tutorial is to demonstrate how to generate and send emails in PHP.

So, you want to send automated email messages from your PHP application. This can be in direct response to a user's action, such as signing up for your site, or a recurring event at a set time, such as a monthly newsletter. Sometimes email contains file attachments, both plain text and HTML portions, and so on. To understand how to send each variation that may exist on an email, we will start with the simple example and move to the more complicated.

• Sending a Simple Text Email
• Sending HTML Email
• Sending Email with Attachments

Note that to send email with PHP you need a working email server that you have permission to use: for Unix machines, this is often Sendmail; for Windows machines, you must set the SMTP directive in your php.ini file to point to your email server.

Sending a Simple Text Email

At first let's consider how to send a simple text email messages. PHP includes the mail() function for sending email, which takes three basic and two optional parameters. These parameters are, in order, the email address to send to, the subject of the email, the message to be sent, additional headers you want to include and finally an additional parameter to the Sendmail program. Themail() function returns True if the message is sent successfully and False otherwise. Have a look at the example:

//define the receiver of the email
$to = 'youraddress@example.com';
//define the subject of the email
$subject = 'Test email';
//define the message to be sent. Each line should be separated with \n
$message = "Hello World!\n\nThis is my first mail.";
//define the headers we want passed. Note that they are separated with \r\n
$headers = "From: webmaster@example.com\r\nReply-To: webmaster@example.com";
//send the email$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";
?>

As you can see, it very easy to send an email. You can add more receivers by either adding their addresses, comma separated, to the $to variable, or by adding cc: or bcc: headers. If you don't receive the test mail, you have probably installed PHP incorrectly, or may not have permission to send emails.

Back to top

Sending HTML Email

The next step is to examine how to send HTML email. However, some mail clients cannot understand HTML emails. Therefore it is best to send any HTML email using a multipart construction, where one part contains a plain-text version of the email and the other part is HTML. If your customers have HTML email turned off, they will still get a nice email, even if they don't get all of the HTML markup. Have a look at the example:

//define the receiver of the email
$to = 'youraddress@example.com';
//define 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: webmaster@example.com\r\nReply-To: webmaster@example.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.ob_start(); //Turn on output buffering
?>
--PHP-alt-
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!!!
This is simple text email message.

--PHP-alt-
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!

This is something with HTML formatting.


--PHP-alt---
//copy current buffer contents into $message variable and delete current output buffer
$message = ob_get_clean();
//send the email$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";
?>

In the preceding example we add one additional header of Content-type:multipart/alternative and boundary string that marks the different areas of the email. Note that the content type of the message itself is sent as a mail header, while the content types of the individual parts of the message are embedded in the message itself. This way, mail clients can decide which part of the message they want to display.

Sending Email with Attachment

The last variation that we will consider is email with attachments. To send an email with attachment we need to use the multipart/mixed MIME type that specifies that mixed types will be included in the email. Moreover, we want to use multipart/alternative MIME type to send both plain-text and HTML version of the email. Have a look at the example:

//define the receiver of the email
$to = 'youraddress@example.com';
//define the subject of the email
$subject = 'Test email with attachment';
//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: webmaster@example.com\r\nReply-To: webmaster@example.com";
//add boundary string and mime type specification
$headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";
//read the atachment file contents into a string,
//encode it with MIME base64,
//and split it into smaller chunks
$attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents('attachment.zip')));
//define the body of the message.
ob_start(); //Turn on output buffering
?>
--PHP-mixed-
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="PHP-alt-"

--PHP-alt-
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!!!
This is simple text email message.

--PHP-alt-
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!

This is something with HTML formatting.


--PHP-alt---

--PHP-mixed-
Content-Type: application/zip; name="attachment.zip"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment


--PHP-mixed---

//copy current buffer contents into $message variable and delete current output buffer
$message = ob_get_clean();
//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";
?>

As you can see, sending an email with attachment is easy to accomplish. In the preceding example we have multipart/mixed MIME type, and inside it we have multipart/alternative MIME type that specifies two versions of the email. To include an attachment to our message, we read the data from the specified file into a string, encode it with base64,  split it in smaller chunks to make sure that it matches the MIME specifications and then include it as an attachment.