What is the format for e-mail headers that display a name rather than the e-mail?

I'm trying to create a php script that will handle a mailing list for me using a mySQL database, and I have most of it in place. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the headers to work right, and I'm not sure what the problem is.

$headers='From: [email protected] \r\n';
$headers.='Reply-To: [email protected]\r\n';
$headers.='X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion().'\r\n';
$headers.= 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers.= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 \r\n';
$headers.= "BCC: $emailList";

The result I'm getting on the recieving end is:

"noreply"@rilburskryler.net rnReply-To: [email protected]: PHP/5.2.13rnMIME-Version: 1.0

Solution 1:

To have names, as opposed to email addresses shown, use the following:

"John Smith" <[email protected]>

Easy.

Regarding the broken line breaks, that is because you are enclosing the text in apostrophes rather than quotation marks:

$headers = array(
  'From: "The Sending Name" <[email protected]>' ,
  'Reply-To: "The Reply To Name" <[email protected]>' ,
  'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion() ,
  'MIME-Version: 1.0' ,
  'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' ,
  'BCC: ' . $emailList
);
$headers = implode( "\r\n" , $headers );

Solution 2:

Within a single quoted string, only the escape sequences \' and \\ are replaced by ' and \ respectively. You need to use double quotes to have the escape sequences \r and \n to be replaces by the corresponding characters:

$headers = "From: [email protected] \r\n";
$headers.= "Reply-To: [email protected]\r\n";
$headers.= "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion()."\r\n";
$headers.= "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers.= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 \r\n";
$headers.= "BCC: $emailList";

You could also use an array to collect the header fields and put them later together:

$headers = array(
    'From: [email protected]',
    'Reply-To: [email protected]',
    'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion(),
    'MIME-Version: 1.0',
    'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1',
    "BCC: $emailList"
);
$headers = implode("\r\n", $headers);