Send your First Email

Hey, are you ready to send an email? This section is more about sendingEmails with PHP, let's go!

Why sending Emails?

Its just a feature that you can incorporate to your chatbots. In order to reach this goal we are going to use Email function of PHP.

Parts of the Mail

Headers

Headers are Important cause these configure MetaInformation of the Email like, the destinatary, the emmisor, some language format and some more.

PHP

$to = $email;
$from = "$companyEmail";
$subject = "Email from a Chatbot";

$headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n";
// Additional headers
$headers .= 'To: ' .$to. "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: ' .$from. "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Bcc: example@email.com' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'CC: example@email.com' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Reply-To: example@email.com' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();

Node.js

ALPHA

Most of the headers are optional, just take care of the first 4 declared and use the optional as much as you need/want.

Variables

In the way that I use to build the mails in PHP I created a way to change some Text inside of the email with Variables

PHP

$variables = [                                      #array-multi
    'user_name' => "$name",
    'user_secretCode' => "$secretCode",
    'company_name' => "$companyName",
    'company_description' => "$companyDescription",
    'company_location' => "$companyLocation",
    'company_email' => "$companyEmail",
    'company_phone' => "$companyPhone",
    'company_webSite' => "$webLink",
    'company_banner' => "$img_Banner",
    'company_facebookSite' => "$facebookLink",
    'company_twitterSite' => "$twitterLink",
    'company_youtubeSite' => "$youtubeLink",
    'company_linkedinSite' => "$linkedinLink",
    'company_instagramSite' => "$instagramLink"
];

$emailUrl = "emails/testmail.html";                           #string

$message = prepareEmail($variables, $emailUrl);

Node.js

ALPHA

These Variables help the structure of the email, if you want to use feel free. Then I get the email Url, this URL and the Emails that the Chatbot send (In general), should be inside of a folder called emails on your chatbot corefolder. After that we use a Function that help us replacing these keywords for Variagles instead, finally we got a long string called message which is the entire structure HTML of the mail, ready to be sent.

└───botcoreFolder
    │   Emails
        |   email.html

Mail Function

PHP has this Mail function predefined

PHP

mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

Node.js

ALPHA

After the execution of this Mail function y recommend you to put it on a IF/ELSE statement just to check if the Email was sent.

Some Considerations

This is not the only way to send Mails, there are others like

• PHP Mailer and other libraries
• Mail Class to send Emails

Errors

Keep an Eye

If you got haven't got any mail, or an Error.

• Try to send a Email outside of the Chatbot environment, if you got it, try next 2 steps.
• Look at the Tutorial Again or check the Video Tutorial
• Check the Troubleshooting Section