Sending mail via localhost

Bakedbean

Hello,
I am setting up a mail script and I am trying to send test mails via localhost to either my hotmail account or a seperate mail client. I Am assuming I will need a mail server. I have mercury in xampp. Can anybody tell my how to configure mercury to be able to send mail via localhost to an external email address or mail client?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

zstarsales04

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SrWebDeveloper

Most people setup Mercury as a relay to a real SMTP server which can be remote.

Details here on setup.

bradgrafelman

Setting up a relay will most likely not work for email services such as Hotmail and the like since it will likely be seen as spam/spoofed sender/etc.

Instead, you could use your ISP's SMTP servers to test scripts locally. Since many ISPs require SMTP authentication, however, you may have to switch to using a 3rd party class such as PHPMailer since PHP's internal mail() function does not support SMTP authentication.

SrWebDeveloper

Just as a technical note, a primary reason Mercury is used in a localhost sandbox like this is to simulate the default MTA on most hosts, i.e. sendmail or exim, etc. Developers often do this to account for that common situation. Of course providing a client a native PHP solution to directly interface with an SMTP client is also warranted in some cases, so thank you for mentioning it as well. 🆒

-jim

bradgrafelman

SrWebDeveloper;10952514 wrote:
Just as a technical note, a primary reason Mercury is used in a localhost sandbox like this is to simulate the default MTA on most hosts, i.e. sendmail or exim, etc.

I hadn't really considered that reason. Still, if you wanted to do so, perhaps you could set Mecury to relay mail through your ISPs SMTP server (authenticating itself using your personal account, as necessary)?

SrWebDeveloper

bradgrafelman;10952517 wrote:
I hadn't really considered that reason. Still, if you wanted to do so, perhaps you could set Mecury to relay mail through your ISPs SMTP server (authenticating itself using your personal account, as necessary)?

😃😃😃