phpmailer stops working

yahyac

As mentioned on another post, I finally got my shopping cart functionality to send confirmation emails to the user and a "New Order" email to me. And mind you, this is not "live" as of yet; it is still all on my cpu. But these emails, done via phpmailer, are (were) working great.

Just the other day, a week or so after the last time i tested, I was bored and just for the heck of it, just to see how "cool" the cart system was and to make myself feel good, I went ahead and submitted another fake cart. However, I never received either of the two emails that should have been automatically sent. Didn't really think anything of it, as I have been very busy.

But I just tested again, and sure enough, no emails! Is there any logical explanation of how emails were working and now they are not. I mean, i must have sent at least 20 or so test carts, and both the "order confirmation" email and the "you have a new order" email were working beautifully. Now, nothing.

Ideas?

NogDog

Any possibility they got rejected by your spam filtering? (Maybe check your "Junk" mailbox or whatever it's called?)

yahyac

Nope not in junk mail.

yahyac

Okay, i'm wondering at the consistency of php/mysql, or more likely, the consistency (perhaps better stated acuracy) of my coding.

Anyway, now it just started it working. Why changed? I simply ran my create.sql and populate.sql scripts again, recreating and repopulating the entire database. Then it works.

Now, in doing so, something weird happend, and for this, you will understand the reason why i started this post the way i did. My create.sql file is a script file that i do NOT touch. It stays the same and makes my job easy. My last line of the create.sql file is an ALTER TABLE command that tells a specific table to do an auto-increment on a particular field, AND to start that auto-increment at a number I specify.

So you ask, what was so weird? Well, that auto-increment did not take. I submitted a cart, and the cartID began at one!!! So then, i was like, "ok, maybe i'm going crazy." I took a deep breath, ran the create.sql and populate.sql scripts again, submitted a new cart, and this time, the cart number begain at the proper number, the one given in the alter table command.

So what the heck is up with that???

yahyac

And with regards to the mail not working, and then it all of a sudden working, is it possible that simply my mail server was done for those few minutes?

Would that explain why the mail did not go? I will say, that when it does work, it takes about 5-7 seconds after I click the submit on the SUBMIT CART button for the new page to load, and I'm assuming these seconds are for the phpmailer to send the email. Now, on the times that the email did NOT work, the new page came IMMEDIATELY. Perhaps this is a clue that, for some reason, the phpmailer just wasn't able to send the message.?. Again, perhaps cause the smtp server was down.?. I'm just shooting in the dark here, as I do not know how phpmailer works.

Anyone?