PHP mail function and SMTP 501 error

Hi guys

I have this mail function in PHP

<code>

function send_email ($recipient, $from, $reply_address, $subject, $message){

ini_set('display_errors', '1');
error_reporting(E_ALL);

$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$headers .= 'To:$recipient\r\n';
$headers .= 'From:<$from>\r\n';
//$headers .= 'Reply-To:$reply_address\r\n';


if(!mail($recipient, $subject, $message, $headers)){
return 'Mail function failed.';
}

else
{
return 'ok';
}
}

</code>

Whenever I call it it comes up with the next error:

Warning: mail(): SMTP server response: 501 Syntax error in forward path in E:\apache2triad\htdocs\i2card.co.uk\functions\email_function.php on line 15


From what I can understand, I made a mistake in setting up the header, but I am not sure which one is it.

Could someone point me in the right direction please?

The "To:" header isn't needed as that's already taken care of by the mail function. It's wrong anyway as it should be "RCPT TO:". "From:" is wrong too, that should be "MAIL FROM:". See RFC 2821 for the correct header syntax.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SirDice

The "To:" header isn't needed as that's already taken care of by the mail function. It's wrong anyway as it should be "RCPT TO:". "From:" is wrong too, that should be "MAIL FROM:". See RFC 2821 for the correct header syntax.

---

Thanks for your reply. I will go through the paper now.

Tried the changes you advised, but the error still appears.

Yet the function on top is derived from

<code>

function send_email($email,$format='text',$msg='',$subject='')
}

// send an email to the address $email in the format $format
// with contents $msg and subject $subject


global $fromname, $fromemail, $admin_email;

if($format!='text' && $format!='html')
{
return 'Invalid mail format!';
}
$headers='';

if($format=='html')
{
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
}
$headers .= "To: $email\r\n";
$headers .= "From: WebSite Admin <$admin_email>\r\n";

if(!mail($email, $subject, $msg, $headers))
{
return 'Mail function failed.';
}
else
{
return 'ok';
}
}

</code>


And that one is proven to be working fine on the other system. That is why I'm so confused :(

It's been ages since I last wrote one of these.

Could the fact that email functionality is not propely set up (i.e. sendmail_path),
could that leat to the 501 error appearing?

I am absolutely no expert in this area but this does look rather odd:

($email,$format='text',$msg='',$subject='')

Are they the right way round?

OK, I got the function to work, but the e-mails are not arriving to the test address given.

Any ideas?

The problem was that the test server does not have "sendmail_path" setup :(

Any error or failure messages?

Is the test address set up properly?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nihil

Any error or failure messages?

Is the test address set up properly?

---

There's no error message, and I'm sending it to my hotmail account, so that should work fine.

well whats your new set of code?

Well turns out that the functions was perfectly fine.

The mail function is called by a different one, the second person on the project made some changes to the variables and the function itself, but not in every necessary place, so the email was going through joined with the username

like:

un; nightcat
em; email@server.com

theyd come through as "email@server.comnightcat"

I got it, only when I started printing out the variables one by one :)