How can i send an Email using PHP at windows Azure?

Question

How can i send an Email using PHP at windows Azure?

i am using simple mail function:

$to .= 'email-Id';
$subject = " Test Subject";

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

echo $message='email text here';
@mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

Answer 1

To send emails using PHP you have a few options:

Option 1: Use SMTP

You'll need to modify your php.ini configuration file (http://php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php) and set the SMTP value to an external SMTP server you can use. SMTP servers are not part of the Windows Azure features at the moment.

[mail function]
SMTP = mail.mycompany.com

Option 2: Use sendmail

You'll need to modify your php.ini configuration file (http://php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php) and set the sendmail_path value to the sendmail executable.

[mail function]
sendmail_path = "C:\wamp\sendmail\sendmail.exe -t"

Since sendmail doesn't exist in Windows, you'll need to use the fake sendmail for windows: http://glob.com.au/sendmail/

Option 3: Use a mail/smtp service

You could use a service like SendGrid to send your emails (they have an offer for Azure users: http://sendgrid.com/azure.html). They'll take care of sending out the email, you'll just need to call the REST api:

$sendgrid = new SendGrid('username', 'password');
$mail = new SendGridMail();
$mail->addTo('[email protected]')->
       setFrom('[email protected]')->
       setSubject('Subject goes here')->
       setText('Hello World!')->
       setHtml('<strong>Hello World!</strong>');
$sendgrid->smtp->send($mail);

Answer 2

I had never done PHP, but the following guide was step by step and incredibly easy to get working.

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/Documentation/Articles/store-sendgrid-php-how-to-send-email/

Hope it helps someone.