Web Development Blog » smtp

PHP Mail Scripts using SMTP transport, a guide for beginners

Olaf — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:53:26 +0000

PHP has a very simple mail function which is used very often for basic text mail messages. What if you need to attach files or if you need to send your e-mail messages via SMTP? Than it’s time to use a more advanced script. This is because the standard mail function has only limited standard capabilities. There are many reasons to use SMTP transport for sending e-mail messages from your web application, some of them are:

Many shared hosting providers doesn’t allow to use the PHP mail() function for security reasons
Your web application is more flexible if you use the Simple Message Transfer Protocol (SMTP). This way your e-mail function is not limited to the servers port or e-mail configuration anymore.
SMTP is much more powerful and secure (using SSL)

In this article we will compare three of the bigger PHP projects which allow to send e-mail messages via SMTP, including attachments.

The Mail class included in the Zend Framework (http://framework.zend.com/)
Swift Mailer (http://swiftmailer.org/)
PHPMailer (http://phpmailer.worxware.com)

We reviewed these three PHP classes because they’re written for PHP5 and they are updated frequently. For our review we tried the provided examples and the documentation. We’re sure that all three classes are very powerful and offer many functions for almost every type of web application. Because this review should help the beginning PHP developer, this article is sho-case for a few functions only.

Our test case for this review

For our example we tested all three classes to send a plain text mail message with a single image attachment, using SMTP transport with authentication. Here is the good news; as a more experienced PHP user, I was able to use the provided examples within several minutes for each of the classes.

Zend Mail Class

ini_set('include_path', '.:/path2directory/ZendFramework/library/');
require_once 'Zend/Loader.php';
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Mail');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Mail_Transport_Smtp');
 
$config = array('auth' => 'login', 
              'username' => 'smtpUser',
              'password' => 'smtpPassword');
 
$transport = new Zend_Mail_Transport_Smtp('smtp.server.com', $config);
$mail = new Zend_Mail();
$at = $mail->createAttachment(file_get_contents('path/logo.png'));
$at->filename = 'logo.png';                                  
$mail->setBodyText('This is the text inside the mail send by Zend_Mail using SMTP transport.');
$mail->setFrom('you@mail.com', 'Your Name');
$mail->addTo('contact@mailservice.us', 'Your friend');
$mail->setSubject('Mail Subject');
$mail->send($transport);

I don’t like the documentation from the Zend framework, you need to check many pages to get all the required code for the snippet above. You need to create a second object to send your message via SMTP. I’m missing the information on their site about how-to test the “send” function to create use a success or error message. Using the class is not very difficult, but installing the Zend Framework might be a hard job for the beginner. This class is a great solution for people already using the Zend Framework or where the the library is provided by the hosting provider.

Swift Mailer

require_once 'Swift/lib/swift_required.php';
 
$transport = Swift_SmtpTransport::newInstance('smtp.server.com', 25)
  ->setUsername('smtpUser')
  ->setPassword('smtpPassword');
 
$mailer = Swift_Mailer::newInstance($transport);
$message = Swift_Message::newInstance('Wonderful Subject')
  ->setFrom(array('you@mail.com' => 'Your Name'))
  ->setTo(array('contact@mailservice.us' => 'Your friend'))
  ->setBody('This is the text of the mail send by Swift using SMTP transport.');
$attachment = Swift_Attachment::newInstance(file_get_contents('path/logo.png'), 'logo.png');  
$message->attach($attachment);
$numSent = $mailer->send($message);
printf("Sent %d messages\n", $numSent);

The snippet looks similar to the code from the Zend mail class, but you have to create 4 different objects:

An object for the SMTP transport (Swift_SmtpTransport)
The object that will send the message (Swift_Mailer)
The message object for all mail parts (Swift_Message)
An object for the attachment (Swift_Attachment)

The configuration/installation is much easier than for the Zend Framework, just include one single file and you’re ready to use the class. If you like this OOP (Object Oriented Programming) style used in this class, this script might be for you.

PHPMailer

require_once 'PHPMailer5/class.phpmailer.php';
 
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->IsSMTP(); 
$mail->Host = 'smtp.server.com';
$mail->Port = 25;
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'smtpUser';
$mail->Password = 'smtpPassword';
$mail->SetFrom('you@mail.com', 'Your Name');
$mail->AddAddress('contact@mailservice.us', 'Your friend');
$mail->Subject = 'PHPMailer Message';
$mail->Body = 'This e-mail is sent through PHPMailer.';
$mail->AddAttachment('path/logo.png', 'logo.png');
if(!$mail->Send()) {
  echo 'Mailer error: '.$mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
  echo 'Message has been sent.';
}

The coding style from this example looks very different from the two others and some PHP developer would say this is not really OOP code. Right PHPMailer doesn’t have one file for each method and for the example above you need to upload only two files. I like the PHPMailer class because of all the information you get on the project’s website.

The three examples above should help you to make the decision which script will work the best for you. Check the links below for the documentation related to the snippets I have used in this artikel:

Similar Posts:

Sending e-mails via SMTP with PHPmailer and Gmail

Olaf — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:40:25 +0000

These days I tried some plugin to send e-mail message within bbpress via SMTP. Since my domains email is hosted with Google applications I decided to send my messages via the SMTP server from GMail. I found several articles and tutorials, but a lot of them didn’t worked for me.

Why using GMail for sending mail messages?

First of all it’s FREE! Sure most website owners can use their own SMTP server for sending email messages from their website, but it makes sense even than to use Gmail for sending mail. The chance is big that your websites IP address is on a blacklist if your site is on hosted by a shared web hosting provider. If not or you host your site on your own server, there is always a risk that your IP address get blacklisted. Because of some limitations, the SMTP server from Google is a good choice applications with less than 500 recipients a day, check this information from the Google help pages.

Requirements

You need for this code example a PHP5 enabled web host (I tested only on Linux), the port 465 need to be open and of course you need a GMail or Google Apps account.

SMTP for Gmail tutorial

If you don’t have one, register a GMail account or setup your domain for Google applications.
Download a recent version of PHPMailer (I used the version 5.02)
Check with your web hosting provider if port 465 (TCP out) is open, if not ask him to open that port
Include the PHPMailer class file: require_once('phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php');
Create those two constant variable to store your GMail login and password. Use the login for your Google application mail if you have one.
```
define('GUSER', 'you@gmail.com'); // Gmail username
define('GPWD', 'password'); // Gmail password
```

Use the following function to send mail messages (add the function in one of your included files):

function smtpmailer($to, $from, $from_name, $subject, $body) { 
	global $error;
	$mail = new PHPMailer();  // create a new object
	$mail->IsSMTP(); // enable SMTP
	$mail->SMTPDebug = 0;  // debugging: 1 = errors and messages, 2 = messages only
	$mail->SMTPAuth = true;  // authentication enabled
	$mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl'; // secure transfer enabled REQUIRED for Gmail
	$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
	$mail->Port = 465; 
	$mail->Username = GUSER;  
	$mail->Password = GPWD;           
	$mail->SetFrom($from, $from_name);
	$mail->Subject = $subject;
	$mail->Body = $body;
	$mail->AddAddress($to);
	if(!$mail->Send()) {
		$error = 'Mail error: '.$mail->ErrorInfo; 
		return false;
	} else {
		$error = 'Message sent!';
		return true;
	}
}

Most of the setting inside the function are required by GMail. While searching for tutorials I found articles with different settings for the port and security. My advice use them as in this tutorial.

Call the function within your code:

smtpmailer('to@mail.com', '', 'from@mail.com', 'yourName', 'test mail message', 'Hello World!');

Use this more “advanced” usage inside your application:

if (smtpmailer('to@mail.com', 'from@mail.com', 'yourName', 'test mail message', 'Hello World!')) {
	// do something
}
if (!empty($error)) echo $error;

Advanced setup with fall-back SMTP server

Because of the limit it might be useful to use a secondary SMTP server if the Gmail option didn’t send the message. For this functionality we need to replace the part with the SMTP settings a little bit. First create login/server variables for the 2nd SMTP server:

define('SMTPUSER', 'you@yoursmtp.com'); // sec. smtp username
define('SMTPPWD', 'password'); // sec. password
define('SMTPSERVER', 'smtp.yoursmtp.com'); // sec. smtp server

Next we need to create a if/else statement using the variables for the second server (replace).

function smtpmailer($to, $from, $from_name, $subject, $body, $is_gmail = true) { 
	global $error;
	$mail = new PHPMailer();
	$mail->IsSMTP();
	$mail->SMTPAuth = true; 
	if ($is_gmail) {
		$mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl'; 
		$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
		$mail->Port = 465;  
		$mail->Username = GUSER;  
		$mail->Password = GPWD;   
	} else {
		$mail->Host = SMTPSERVER;
		$mail->Username = SMTPUSER;  
		$mail->Password = SMTPPWD;
	}        
	$mail->SetFrom($from, $from_name);
	$mail->Subject = $subject;
	$mail->Body = $body;
	$mail->AddAddress($to);
	if(!$mail->Send()) {
		$error = 'Mail error: '.$mail->ErrorInfo;
		return false;
	} else {
		$error = 'Message sent!';
		return true;
	}
}

And use the function now as followed:

$msg = 'Hello World';
$subj = 'test mail message';
$to = 'to@mail.com';
$from = 'from@mail.com';
$name = 'yourName';
 
if (smtpmailer($to, $from, $name, $subj, $msg)) {
	echo 'Yippie, message send via Gmail';
} else {
	if (!smtpmailer($to, $from, $name, $subj, $msg, false)) {
		if (!empty($error)) echo $error;
	} else {
		echo 'Yep, the message is send (after hard working)';
	}
}

Both examples are very simple and demonstrate only how-to send mail messages via the SMTP server from Gmail. Of course the user can extend the code to handle HTML messages and attachments etc. If you have any issues with these examples, just let me know. Post a comment here or post to our partner PHP script forum.

Similar Posts: