CODEWITHSUNDEEP
php
Edward
Edward

Reputation: 1914

PHP mail returns false

I am a PHP beginner and I just started to create my own website. I am running into a problem that mail() is returning FALSE with no reason.

My idea was to implement a password reset mechanism. When a user enter his email, the HTML form will pass the information to the php script, and the php script will perform verifications and reset the password by a randomly generated password followed up by sending this temperary password to the user email. Below is my code:

<?php
    session_start();
    $email = $_POST['email'];

    function random_string_generator ($character_options, $length_of_generated_string)
    {
        $random_string = "";

        //count the number of characters available for picking
        $num_valid_charactor = strlen($character_options);

        for ( $i = 0 ; $i < $length_of_generated_string; $i++ ){
            $random_pick = mt_rand(1, $num_valid_charactor);
            $random_char = $character_options[$random_pick-1];
            $random_string .= $random_char;
        } 

        return $random_string;
    }

    function createSalt()
    {
        $string = md5(uniqid(rand(), true));
        return substr($string, 0, 3);
    }

    $dbhost = 'localhost';
    $dbname = 'my_db';
    $dbuser = 'root';
    $dbpass = ''; 
    $conn = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass);

    mysql_select_db($dbname, $conn);

    $query = "SELECT password, salt FROM users WHERE email = '$email';";
    $result = mysql_query($query);

    if(mysql_num_rows($result) < 1)
    { //no such user exists
        $_SESSION['error'] = '1';
        $_SESSION['message']    = 'user does not exist';
        header("Location: Forgot_password.php");
    }
    else
    {
        $random_pick_options = "1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
        $temporary_password = random_string_generator($random_pick_options, 12);

        $hash = hash('sha256', $temporary_password);

        $salt = createSalt();
        $hash = hash('sha256', $salt . $hash);      

        $query = "UPDATE users set password=$hash, salt=$salt where email=$email;";
        mysql_query($query);

        //Email user the temporary password
        $email_from = "[email protected]";
        $email_to    = $email;
        $message    = "Dear user,\n\n your temporary passowrd is: " . $temporary_password . "\n This is an auto-generated email. Please do not reply to this email address.\n\n ALEMC\n";

        mail($email_to, "ALEMC: Password Reset", $message, "From: $email_from");

        $_SESSION['message'] = "password reset";
        header("Location: Login_form.php");
    }               
?>

Any idea what is wrong? Or is there any better way to do mail sending then using php?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 323

Answers (2)

px4n
px4n

Reputation: 416

I would personally recommend you use something like swiftmailer (http://swiftmailer.org/), it just works. Look at how your PHP Mail/Server configuration is setup. and do something to protect yourself from SQL injection.

Upvotes: 0

Pitchinnate
Pitchinnate

Reputation: 7556

There must be something wrong with your php setup. I personally like to use PHPMailer when sending email from php you have a lot more options.

Upvotes: 2

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