Sending Email With PHPMailer

This example will show you how to send HTML mail from you Cake application with PHPMailer. You will create:

1. cakePHP component
2. a vendor package
3. view for plain text email body
4. view for HTML email body
5. a function in your controller to send mail.

TODO: Show how to send attachments and images inside HTML.

1. Get PHPMailer
2. Unpack it into app/vendors/phpmailer/ , so you’ll have /vendors/phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php etc.etc.

1. Create two views , email_body_html.thtml and email_body_plain.thtml and place them in app/views/your_controller/

Create new component email: paste the following code into app/controllers/components/email.php

 
/**
 * This is a component to send email from CakePHP using PHPMailer
 * @link http://wiki.cakephp.org/tutorials:sending_email_with_phpmailer
 * @see http://wiki.cakephp.org/tutorials:sending_email
 */
 
class EmailComponent
{
/**
 * Send email using SMTP Auth by default.
 */
    var $from         = 'phpmailer@cakephp'; 
    var $fromName     = "Cake PHP-Mailer";
    var $smtpUserName = 'username';  // SMTP username
    var	$smtpPassword = 'password'; // SMTP password
    var $smtpHostNames= "smtp1.example.com;smtp2.example.com";  // specify main and backup server
    var $text_body = null;
    var $html_body = null;
    var $to = null;
    var $toName = null;
    var $subject = null;
    var $cc = null;
    var $bcc = null;
 
	var $controller;
 
	function startup( &$controller ) {
		$this->controller = &$controller;
	}
 
    function bodyText() {
	/** This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients
	 */
        ob_start();
        $this->controller->render('email_body_plain');
        $mail = ob_get_clean();
        return $mail;
    }
 
    function bodyHTML() {
	/** This is HTML body text for HTML-enabled mail clients
	 */
        ob_start();
        $this->controller->render('email_body_html');
        $mail = ob_get_clean();
        return $mail;
    }
 
 
    function send()
    {
		vendor('phpmailer'.DS.'class.phpmailer');
 
		$mail = new PHPMailer();
 
		$mail->IsSMTP();            // set mailer to use SMTP
		$mail->SMTPAuth = true;     // turn on SMTP authentication
		$mail->Host 	= $this->smtpHostNames;
		$mail->Username = $this->smtpUserName;
		$mail->Password = $this->smtpPassword;
 
		$mail->From     = $this->from;
		$mail->FromName = $this->fromName;
		$mail->AddAddress($this->to, $this->toName );
		$mail->AddReplyTo($this->from, $this->fromName );
 
		$mail->CharSet	= 'UTF-8';
		$mail->WordWrap = 50;                                 // set word wrap to 50 characters
		//$mail->AddAttachment("/var/tmp/file.tar.gz");         // add attachments
		//$mail->AddAttachment("/tmp/image.jpg", "new.jpg");    // optional name
		$mail->IsHTML(true);                                  // set email format to HTML
 
		$mail->Subject = $this->subject;
		$mail->Body    = $this->bodyHTML();
		$mail->AltBody = $this->bodyText();
 
		$success = $mail->Send();
 
       	return $success;
    }
 
}
 

1. In your controller:

    var $components = array('Email'); //  use component email
    ...
 
    function send() {
		$this->set('contact', $this->data['contact'] );
		$this->Email->to   = 'me@my.com';
		//$this->Email->cc = 'someone@copied.com';
		//$this->Email->bcc = 'someone@blindcopied.com';
		$this->Email->subject	= 'from Cake Mailer ';
		$result = $this->Email->send();
 
		//the rest of the controller method...
  	}
 
    }

That’s all.

Olle Jonsson here. I love this. I had a problem with the Email component’s action’s views were wrapped by my default.thtml layout file. To fix that, I did these changes to the Email component’s actions:

    function bodyText() {
	/** This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients
	 */
        ob_start();
	$temp_layout = $this->controller->layout;
	$this->controller->layout = "";  // Turn off the layout wrapping
        $this->controller->render('email_body_plain');
        $mail = ob_get_clean();
	$this->controller->layout = $temp_layout; // Turn on layout wrapping again
        return $mail;
    }
 
    function bodyHTML() {
	/** This is HTML body text for HTML-enabled mail clients
	 */
        ob_start();
	$temp_layout = $this->controller->layout;
	$this->controller->layout = "";
        $this->controller->render('email_body_html');
        $mail = ob_get_clean();
	$this->controller->layout = $temp_layout;
        return $mail;
    }

After changing that, my email is sent predictably.

Reading this I didn’t see the point in just having one template for all of my emails. So I changed the code... A TINY bit

1. Create two templates with the same name one for plain text and one for html and then prefix them with _text, _html e.g. confirm_text.thtml

  confirm_html.thtml

2. Add a new variable in the EmailCompnent at the end of all of the variable declarations so it looks like.

class EmailComponent
{
/**
 * Send email using SMTP Auth by default.
 */
    var $from         = 'no-reply@somewhere.com'; 
    var $fromName     = "yourwebsite.com";
    var $smtpUserName = 'username';  // SMTP username
    var $smtpPassword = 'password'; // SMTP password
    var $smtpHostNames= "localhost";  // specify main and backup server
    var $text_body = null;
    var $html_body = null;
    var $to = null;
    var $toName = null;
    var $subject = null;
    var $cc = null;
    var $bcc = null;
    var $template = null; // New line we've just added

3. Alter the bodyText and bodyHTML functions so that it looks like this

    function bodyText() {
	/** This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients
	 */
        ob_start();
	$temp_layout = $this->controller->layout;
	$this->controller->layout = '';  // Turn off the layout wrapping
        $this->controller->render($this->template . '_text'); // New line to allow text template
        $mail = ob_get_clean();
	$this->controller->layout = $temp_layout; // Turn on layout wrapping again
        return $mail;
    }
 
    function bodyHTML() {
	/** This is HTML body text for HTML-enabled mail clients
	 */
        ob_start();
	$temp_layout = $this->controller->layout;
	$this->controller->layout = 'email';  // Contradicting Olle Jonsson's fix I've added a HTML wrapper for my html email in /app/views/layouts
        $this->controller->render($this->template . '_html'); // New line to allow html template
        $mail = ob_get_clean();
	$this->controller->layout = $temp_layout; // Turn on layout wrapping again
        return $mail;
    }

Now when you go to send your email just add “$this→Email→template = ‘email/confirm’;” I generally tend to put my email templates in an email subfolder to my controller views.

So now it should look like

	$this->Email->template = 'email/confirm';
	$this->set('data', $data);
	$this->Email->to = 'someone@somewhere.com';
	$this->Email->subject = 'your new account';
	$result = $this->Email->send();

Hope this helps!!

Gavin Williams

Okay, decided to add the ability to add attachments to this much loved CakePHPmailer.

1. First add this new function to your component.

function attach($filename, $asfile = '') {
		if (empty($this->attachments)) {
			$this->attachments = array();
			$this->attachments[0]['filename'] = $filename;
			$this->attachments[0]['asfile'] = $asfile;
		} else {
			$count = count($this->attachments);
			$this->attachments[$count+1]['filename'] = $filename;
			$this->attachments[$count+1]['asfile'] = $asfile;
		}
	}

2. Add the following variable to your component.

var $attachments = null;

3. Modify the send function to the following.

function send()
    {
		vendor('phpmailer'.DS.'class.phpmailer');
 
		$mail = new PHPMailer();
 
		$mail->IsSMTP();            // set mailer to use SMTP
		$mail->SMTPAuth = true;     // turn on SMTP authentication
		$mail->Host 	= $this->smtpHostNames;
		$mail->Username = $this->smtpUserName;
		$mail->Password = $this->smtpPassword;
 
		$mail->From     = $this->from;
		$mail->FromName = $this->fromName;
		$mail->AddAddress($this->to, $this->toName );
		$mail->AddReplyTo($this->from, $this->fromName );
 
		$mail->CharSet	= 'UTF-8';
		$mail->WordWrap = 50;                                 // set word wrap to 50 characters
		
		if (!empty($this->attachments)) {
			foreach ($this->attachments as $attachment) {
				if (empty($attachment['asfile'])) {
					$mail->AddAttachment($attachment['filename']);
				} else {
					$mail->AddAttachment($attachment['filename'], $attachment['asfile']);
				}
			}
		}
		//$mail->AddAttachment("/var/tmp/file.tar.gz");         // add attachments
		//$mail->AddAttachment("/tmp/image.jpg", "new.jpg");    // optional name
		$mail->IsHTML(true);                                  // set email format to HTML
 
		$mail->Subject = $this->subject;
		$mail->Body    = $this->bodyHTML();
		$mail->AltBody = $this->bodyText();
 
		$success = $mail->Send();
 
       	return $success;
    }

4. To use, now all you do is call $this→Email→attach($fully_qualified_filename, optionally $new_name_when_attached);