Errors with Pear::Mail

[Derokorian]

Ok yesterday I spent all day getting the pear mail function to work. Now today its giving me errors... loads of them. The first is:
(2048) Non-static method Mail::factory() should not be called statically, assuming $this from incompatible context
Line 152 of file C:\wamp\www\application\controllers\user.php

The code calling it is:

	private function send($msg) {
		$params = array();
		$params['host'] = SMTP_HOST;
		$params['port'] = SMTP_PORT;
		$params['auth'] = TRUE;
		$params['username'] = SMTP_USER;
		$params['password'] = SMTP_PASS;
		$mail =& Mail::factory('smtp',$params);

	$headers = array();
	$headers['From'] = SMTP_USER;
	$headers['Reply-to'] = SMTP_REPLY;
	$headers['To'] = $msg['To'];
	$headers['Subject'] = $msg['Subject'];

	if( $mail->send($msg['To'],$headers,$msg['body']) ) return TRUE;
	return FALSE;
} // End: send()

What's really confusing is it worked yesterday to all 3 of my emails addresses. And now all of a sudden getting this and more errors (but I think the other errors are cascaded from this). The SMTP_ constants are defined in the site config.

[sneakyimp]

I just took a peek at their latest source code available for download and it would appear that the factory function in the Mail class is indeed not identified as static which is kind of a problem with the code. You could try adding 'public static' before that function in the source code and this might fix your problem.

The documentation says:

Calling non-static methods statically generates an E_STRICT level warning.

so you could also change your error reporting to something else:

error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);

I'm not certain but I think that might do it. You might also need ^ E_STRICT in there too.

[Derokorian]

Error reporting is set to everything during development. If I add public static to the factory funciton I then get:

07-19-2011 at 20:01:42.92783900-> (8192) Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated
Line 349 of file C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.4\PEAR\Mail\smtp.php

And alot of this error:

07-19-2011 at 20:01:42.93684300-> (2048) Non-static method PEAR::isError() should not be called statically, assuming $this from incompatible context
Line 365 of file C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.4\PEAR\Mail\smtp.php

What I don't get is it was working just fine without any errors when I set it up, now its bugging out... I didn't update php, apache, or any scripts related. >.<

Also, its sending the email, but giving these errors. I know I can just ignore them since it works but I don't like when I have errors.

[sneakyimp]

If you are set up to show all errors (E_ALL) then most libraries you plan to use will throw up these errors. I've noticed in particular that most libraries expect E_NOTICE and E_STRICT errors to be suppressed such that only E_ERROR and E_WARNING are shown.

The correct solution is to correct the code itself. A more pragmatic one would be to either adjust your error reporting so that it hides notices and strict errors (and deprecated ones) OR to route the errors to a log file so that they don't interrupt the layout of your page.