PHP Cookbook

17.4. Posting Messages to Usenet Newsgroups

Problem

You want to post a message to a Usenet newsgroup, such as comp.lang.php.

Solution

Use imap_mail_compose( ) to format the message, then write the message to the server using sockets:

$headers['from'] = '[e-mail]';
$headers['subject'] = 'New Version of PHP Released!';
$headers['custom_headers'][] = 'Newsgroups: comp.lang.php';

$body[0]['type'] = TYPETEXT;
$body[0]['subtype'] = 'plain';
$body[0]['contents.data'] = 'Go to http://www.php.net and download it today!';

$post = imap_mail_compose($headers, $body);

$server = 'nntp.example.com';
$port = 119;

$sh = fsockopen($server, $port) or die ("Can't connect to $server.");
fputs($sh, "POST\r\n");
fputs($sh, $post);
fputs($sh, ".\r\n");
fclose($sh);

Discussion

No built-in PHP functions can post a message to a newsgroup. Therefore, you must open a direct socket connection to the news server and send the commands to post the message. However, you can use imap_mail_compose( ) to format a post and create the headers and body for the message. Every message must have three headers: the From: address, the message Subject:, and the name of the newsgroup:

$headers['from'] = '[e-mail]';
$headers['subject'] = 'New Version of PHP Released!';
$headers['custom_headers'][  ] = 'Newsgroups: comp.lang.php';

Create an array, $headers, to hold the message headers. You can directly assign the values for the From: and Subject: headers, but you can’t do so for the Newsgroups: header. Because ...