[RESOLVED] PHPmailer

[davidmorley]

This is what I have :

<?php
ini_set('display_errors',true);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
require ('\vendor\phpmailer\phpmailer\PHPMailerAutoload.php');

// Intermediate code deleted

// Now try to do the mailing

$bodytext="xyz";

$email= new PHPmailer();
$email->From      = '[e-mail]';
$email->FromName  = 'David';   

$email->Body      = $bodytext;
$email->AddAddress( '[e-mail]'  );
if(!$email->send()) {
    echo 'Message could not be sent.';
    echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $email->ErrorInfo;
} else {
    echo 'Message has been sent';
}

?>

This is the result :

Message could not be sent.Mailer Error: Could not instantiate mail function.

[e-mail] exists on the website.

Can anyone spot what I have missed, please ?

[NogDog]

If running from your local PC, you may have to either install an actual mailer and configure PHP to use it, or else tell PHPMailer to use SMTP, and then send the email through an external mail service on which you have an account. (I usually just use SMTP in that case and send it via the internet provider mail account. PHPMailer comes with its own SMTP class to handle that, so it's pretty easy to do.)

[dalecosp]

There could be several reasons it couldn't instantiate, but not having an MTA is the primary one, as NogDog has already observed. Tell us about the system this is running on (OS, installed packages that are relevant, etc.)

[sneakyimp]

It's been my experience that you shouldn't rely on the php [man]mail[/man] function to send mail. Most of the servers I work on are virtual machines and the companies that provide them put every IP they might obtain on a "policy block list" -- basically a list of IPs that are not allowed to send mail. This is to prevent spam operations from just firing up these machines and sending spam mail. The companies who provide these servers are doing everyone a favor by telling them not to accept mail from these IPs.

That being the case, I would suggest you configure PHPMailer to use SMTP as suggested by NogDog. You can connect to a gmail account this way and send mail through it -- although there are limitations. If the limitations present a problem, consider SendGrid or MailChimp or something like that.

[davidmorley]

The background to this is : I am collecting some data from a form on a web site which I own, and which is located on a commercial server
where I rent space. Although I can save the data at the server I want to try and send it back to myself so that I can store it in the office on
a computer which is not connected to the internet. So I thought that I would write the data on to a sheet and then email the sheet to myself and
finally manipulate the information into Excel. (Or some scheme along these lines). Never having used phpmailer before I thought to just send a simple
message first. It seems that this is not so quite straightforward as I thought. I checked with server-support and there is no embargo on sending a mail in this way.

[sneakyimp]

OK it sounds like your ISP does permit outgoing mail. I'm guessing the machine is a shared host and probably NOT on a policy block list. However, this does not mean that mail sent from this machine will actually reach its destination. Shared hosts tend to find themselves on spam blocking lists too because they host a lot of little sites from god-knows-who.

I will also point out that email is not a secure communication channel. This may not be a big deal if you are just delivering contact information to yourself like someone's email and a simple message, but you should never email credit card information or anything sensitive unless it's encrypted. It is possible to set up your server to encrypt mail using this tool. It's a bit complicated, but the explanation in the README file should be pretty informative.

But anyway let me try and get your question answered. PHPMailer supports SMTP mail. I googled around quickly and found an example which I have modified a bit here:

require_once('class.phpmailer.php');
//include("class.smtp.php"); // optional, gets called from within class.phpmailer.php if not already loaded

$mail             = new PHPMailer();

$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP
$mail->SMTPDebug  = 1;                     // enables SMTP debug information (for testing)
                                           // 1 = errors and messages
                                           // 2 = messages only


// the following settings allow you to use an account on some email system
// to SEND the message. You basically login with the password and send the mail.
// these should work with a gmail account
$mail->SMTPAuth   = TRUE;                  // enable SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPSecure = "tls";                 // sets the prefix to the servier
$mail->Host       = "smtp.gmail.com";      // sets GMAIL as the SMTP server
$mail->Port       = 587;                   // set the SMTP port for the GMAIL server
$mail->Username   = "[e-mail]";  // GMAIL username
$mail->Password   = "yourpassword";            // GMAIL password

$mail->SetFrom('[e-mail]', 'First Last');

$mail->AddReplyTo("[e-mail]","First Last");

$mail->Subject    = "PHPMailer Test Subject via smtp (Gmail), basic";

$mail->AltBody    = "To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer!"; // optional, comment out and test

$mail->MsgHTML("<html><body><p>Here is the test HTML message which will be used if your mail client supports html</p></body></html>");

// the recipient
$address = "[e-mail]";
$mail->AddAddress($address, "John Doe");

// you can attach stuff if you want
$mail->AddAttachment("images/phpmailer.gif");      // attachment
$mail->AddAttachment("images/phpmailer_mini.gif"); // attachment

if(!$mail->Send()) {
  echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
  echo "Message sent!";
}

[davidmorley]

OK. Thank you. I got to work after a bit. Google mail did not like the source and I had to set it to allow mails from "less secure sources"

[davidmorley]

Thank you. I got it to work. Googlemail neds you to set it to "less secure sources".

[sneakyimp]

Glad to hear it's working. A word of security advice: do not use your primary gmail account for this. Obviously, you have to store the email password on the server. If the server gets compromised, so does your email password. Obviously this would be very bad if you had bank accounts or something connected to this email address.

In fact, depending on how the server is configured, other users with access to the server may be able to see the contents of your files. Hopefully the server is using something like su_exec or similar to make sure that different users are properly isolated from each other.