Our main programmer died from covid. He had built a program in his code using Swiftmailer, which is no longer active.
I am going to reprogram it all using PHPmailer.
But I don't know how to customize each email with their first name, username in our website and their custom info.
In the PHP for swiftmailer, he did it like this:
$hdr = new SmtpApiHeader();
// Set all of the above variables
$hdr->addTo($toList);
$hdr->addSubVal('~USERNAME~', $usernameList);
$hdr->addSubVal('~FirstName~', $firstnameList);
$hdr->addSubVal('~code~', $codeList);
~code~ was a merge field to replace a security code when it sent an email to them, like if they changed their password, and they needed to get a code to authenticate it was from them.
or update their profile.
so those are where he added their personalizations, those were arrays.
$toList // this would be an array of every email. then it matched the position of the other arrays for their personal info, to put in each email.
He built these as the function to send one email, or many, depending on what the email is for. All based upon subscribers who have opted in to get transactional emails from the system.
So how do we do this with PHP Mailer? I have been reading since last night, everything I could find and I cannot see how to do it.
can someone point me to a place online with the right documentation? Most of what I read, none of it touched on it.
I feel like I've been spinning my wheels.
Thanks for any pointers.
-Rich
You can set all the message parameters through equivalent properties in PHPMailer, such as From, FromName, Subject (and many more, see the docs), but PHPMailer does not have built-in templating. There are many ways to do that, and many packages that can help you do it (Smarty, Twig, etc), so I recommend you use them.
For sending to lists, look at the mailing list example provided with PHPMailer.
Alternatively, while SwiftMailer itself is no longer supported separately, that only happened because it became Symfony's mail component. I've not looked at it, but I strongly suspect that it will be largely unchanged, so you may find it easier to use that.
Related
I'm building a Symfony 2 web application. My e-mails are sent via Swiftmailer.
Since in the last version of my web app, I logged all e-mails sent by the mailer class/function in the database to keep track (see if the system works and have a certain proof that my e-mail was at least sent), I wanted to do the same in this version. At that time, I was using PHPMailer which I wrapped in a function to include the PDO calls.
Using Symfony and Swiftmailer now, I wondered how I could easily log all the e-mails in my database with, of course, doctrine ORM.
I guess the easiest thing would be to log it manually each time I send an e-mail, but I want it to be done automatically since I will be sending a whole lot of e-mails. I also want my class afterwards to be as flexible as Swiftmailer is, so wrapping everything in a "simple function" is not an alternative.
A first idea I had, was to extend the Swiftmailer class and add a custom send method that internally calls the herited send()-method. The issue with that is, that I do not exactly know where to place that class and also, I would need to connect or call it via custom services since the build-in service uses the Swiftmailer itself, wouldn't I?
In addition to that, there is the issue that e-mails are maybe spooled and in that case, send() does not give you feedback, if the e-mail has really been send. Or do I have a misunderstanding of way that works?
Did anybody else have a similar issue/request? If so, how did you solve it?
Thank you.
Ok, I've now found a bundle, the Swiftmailer-logger-bundle, that solves my issue.
https://github.com/tweedegolf/swiftmailer-logger-bundle
For those who have a similar issue: Have a look at that bundle. If it does not fit your needs, it will at least explain how to use the swiftmailer events.
There's a couple of approaches you could take here. First approach is as you said, persist email to the database and send email from the database and see if it was sent that way. The Automailer bundle does that for you.
I wouldn't recommend that approach as you'd need to maintain that table of data that can expand quickly and easily. You're also probably going to need to maintain an MTA.
What you're probably more interested in is if the email was received by the end user. If that's what you're trying to find out I would recommend using a transactional mail service such as Mandrill or Sendgrid. The reasons I'd recommend this are.
You don't need to operate an MTA
You don't need to worry about storing your email locally.
They have an API that makes sending tractional email very simple
They have API's that make it trivial to find out if the message you sent was received.
I am looking for a package/bundle that can access an email inbox, retrieve the emails in the inbox and parse them (Sender Email, Subject, Body, Attachments) for processing in my Symfony2 application. The idea is a "helpdesk" where people can email a specific email address and a cron job will run through the email inbox and convert emails into helpdesk tickets (with attachments).
Before anyone tells me to Google or something equally unhelpful, please note that I have spent over an hour on Google as well as gone over more than 100 StackOverflow threads looking for something that can help me with this. Most of the content involves sending emails and not retrieving them. I have built a pure PHP parser before and it was a nightmare (as almost every email client composes the emails a little differently).
I found https://packagist.org/packages/lasso/mail-parser-bundle, but it seems to only be for Zend. I have also found https://github.com/iJanki/MailMimeDecodeBundle, but it seems to still be a work in progress and there is no documentation to speak of. Additionally, I found Correct way to retrieve mails by IMAP in symfony2, but that looks just like the start of the nightmare I had last time when I built one from scratch.
I would appreciate any suggestions or pointers from anyone who has implemented something similar or has been in a similar situation.
I have found a PHP class that does exactly what I wanted and neatly parses the emails into fromAddress, subject, body and attachments. It even saves the attachments to specified location on your server.
https://github.com/barbushin/php-imap
While it is not a Symfony2 Bundle, it is very easy to integrate into Symfony by supplying the class with a namespace and then using it in your desired controller.
I built support system (web) where my helpdesk can open new tickets/issues.
I want my clients to be able to send email with the issue text and file attache, to specific email address, and new ticket will be opened in my system.
For that I need to know how to scan the folder and how to add the email data to my DB.
what do I need to look for, in the internet, for that? what is the subject?
(I'm using PHP)
As the other's have commented, it's likely a larger task than you're ready to handle. But it doesn't hurt to try.
If I was tasked with the job, I'd take advantage of Gmail (for it's spam reducing features and large storage) to accept incoming email. From there, you simply need to setup a script that connects to your email account and processes the email for storage in your database.
Normally I recommend a solid library for making the job easier and cleaner, but I have a suspicion that you may not be familiar with OOP. If you at least know how to utilize classes, then check out Github:
https://github.com/search?l=PHP&q=imap&ref=searchresults&type=Repositories
Otherwise, if you're new and don't mind writing something "messy" then the following should at least point you in a good direction:
Connecting & retrieving emails for IMAP:
http://www.php.net/imap
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imap-open.php
Fetching/processing attachments:
(note that attachments are part of the email body)
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imap-fetchstructure.php
Storing attachments (in the filesystem):
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mkdir.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.file-put-contents.php
There's plenty of Googling left for you to do. So go forth and make a lot of mistakes. Read the manual. Kick yourself for not having read it sooner, then go make more mistakes. Isn't that how most of us learn?
The first thing that comes to mind is to pop the most recent emails if you have pop3 set up or use imap functions. I did something similar to this using c# using openpop.net. So that could be a starting point.
You can use this method, using the cURL to fetch the emails from Gmail server through feed atom. XML response will return and we can convert it to HTML.
http://www.code4share.net/items/get-unread-email-in-gmail-by-php/XRGXVVh.html
I'm confused about how mail works in PHP and CakePHP.
1.) What is the difference between sending an email either using the PHP mail function / CakePHP email helper or SMPTP as shown here: http://book.cakephp.org/1.3/en/view/1290/Sending-A-Message-Using-SMTP as the outcome looks the same?
2.) To specify who the email is coming from, you pass in the email in the header, but you can put whatever you want, so what is stopping you from just putting in anything? like yourbank.com? mail('you#gmail.com', "Subject", "Message", "From: <dave#yourbank.com>"); I just tried it and it worked fine and I couldn't find out anyway in Gmail to see if it didn't come from dave at yourbank.com...
Hopefully I can get some light on these two questions. Thanks.
1). CakePHP has a bunch of helpers & functionality implemented to make life easier when developing applications. As you've discovered, Cake has mail functionality. I suggest reading this whole page http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-utility-libraries/email.html (It's 2.0 not 1.3, so please not there have been some big alterations between the two versions). The article covers in depth on why you may configure something in a particular manner.
CakePHP is using the default mail function with PHP. It's just allow you to incorporate views into the content and configure the outgoing mail in a much easier manner.
2) As for putting in potentially any email address within the From Header.... this can potentially fall under the category of Email Spoofing, essentially sending an email when it's not authorized from the source (From Header). Again this links back to configuring specific mail servers.
By default mail clients and generally setup to prevent spam and junk, this is done by taking a large amount of steps. Some may be..
Keyword checking, (Checking the contents of an email for any
keywords classified as spam).
Header checking, <--- This is the one that answers your
question.
Essentially... headers are examined and checked to see if the server that the mail was sent from has the authority to use the given from address.
As I don't have enough technical knowledge, i'll throw a few pages your way which discuss setting up records against your DNS/Domain so emails are validated correctly and not put within spam folders.
http://www.ipswitch.com/support/imail/guide/imailgsv8.1/Appendix%20A%20dns4.html
http://help.postageapp.com/kb/application-features/dkim-and-spf-setup-and-validation
How to properly set up DNS SPF records?
I hope my jumbled ramblings make some sort of sense.
Question 1: PHP mail function uses your own server's built in email functionality to send email. If you use SMTP, you're connecting to another server (eg. Google's mail servers) and using that server to send the email.
CakePHP's email component can use either PHP mail, or SMTP, depending on how you configure it.
The outcome is basically the same in many respects. Which way is best for you will depend on your set up, the volume of email you're sending, whether your own server has any restrictions with regards to sending mail, etc. If you Google "PHP mail versus SMTP" or similar, then you'll get some info to help you decide which is best for you.
If you're not sending much email, eg. if you're just wanting to send the results of an enquiry form that gets submitted a few times each day, then just use PHP mail and don't worry about it.
Question 2: Although email programs put various measures in place to make sure mail is legitimate, basically nothing stops fake emails completely. You can send Fake email. Check out this site: http://deadfake.com/Send.aspx and in particular, their FAQ section: http://deadfake.com/FAQ.aspx
Spam filters do their best to catch fake emails, but ultimately it's up to the end user to keep their wits about them, especially with banking emails!
I am new to PHP, but have a decent grasp of things (have not learned classes yet).
The question:
Which to choose? PHPMailer or mail() for my new contact form.
The form is simple:
Your name:
Your email:
Subject:
Body:
I have around 2,000 visitors per day and receive about 10 submissions per day, so I don't need anything too fancy. =)
Miscellaneous questions in my head:
Is PHPMailer going to better protect my Contact Form from CC: injection (major concern)? I already know the anti-spambot display:none CSS trick.
Will PHPMailer save me the step of having to write an email_validator() function?
Will PHPMailer save me any other time of having to write any custom functions?
Thanks! With any luck, I'll be answering questions soon. Lol
Here is all I could think of in one sitting, forgive me if there are any glaring omissions.
Advantages to using PHP's built-in mail function, no external library/wrapper:
You don't need anything outside of
PHP.
You don't need to learn a new API.
You don't have to worry about a PHP
upgrade or such breaking the script.
You don't have to worry about an
updated version not working on your
PHP installation.
You don't have to worry about
potential security vulnerabilities as
a result of using that script.
If it's a simple task, you'll be done
in a few minutes.
Advantages to using an external library/wrapper:
If you need to introduce more
complexity into your emailing, you
can do so quite easily. Adding
attachments, inline images and such
are not much fun using PHP plain mail
function. External libraries (at
least the good ones) have a more
OOPish API. Adding an attachment can be as easy as $message->addAttachment($file); without having to play around with headers, etc.
External libraries better hide the
ugly complexities of tasks such as
adding attachments, character
encodings and inline images.
Using a library now will save you the
hassle of having to learn it in the
future when you do need the
additional complexity/functionality.
External libraries probably (I'm
really not sure which ones, and to
what extent) address certain
vulnerabilities that PHP's mail does
not.
If I can think of anything else, I'll be sure to add it.
This will maybe not really answer all your questions, but it won't hurt either, I guess...
Whatever you want to do, I would not go with mail() : sending a mail is not such an easy task, and using an existing library/framework will always be a good idea : it will solve many problems you probably have not even thought about -- even if you don't need to send lots of mails.
About your specific questions, maybe other answers will say something else and/or get your more informations, but any "good" library created to send mails should deal with those kind of problems... Else, you should probably search for another library ^^
Still, testing a couple of dumb non-addresses will allow you to be 100% sure ;-)
Another solution to be quite sure is to check the source of the library ;-)
In the source of version 2.2.1, you'll find stuff like this :
class.phpmailer.php, function AddAnAddress, line 413, you'll see this :
if (!self::ValidateAddress($address)) {
$this->SetError($this->Lang('invalid_address').': '. $address);
if ($this->exceptions) {
throw new phpmailerException($this->Lang('invalid_address').': '.$address);
}
echo $this->Lang('invalid_address').': '.$address;
return false;
}
And it seems this function is used by the other functions that add an address... So, I suppose there's some kind of email-addresses validation ;-)
That'll answer at least one of your questions ^^
PHPMailer is not the only solution that exists, btw ; there are plenty of others, like, for instance :
Zend_Mail
Rmail for PHP (Formerly known as HTML Mime Mail)
Swift Mailer
As Pascal MARTIN mentioned, sending an email isn't as straight forward and easy as some people just assume it is. To answer your questions directly. Yes PHPMailer does do some validation, but it's not super-advanced, but should be enough for your uses. And PHPMailer will save you some time depending on what custom functions you will need. Some things to consider though:
HTML vs plain text. If the emails are only ever going to you, this probably isn't as big of a deal. But if you're ever sending emails to your users (say a confirmation email) you want to be able to support both HTML and plain text clients. PHPMailer (and Zend_Mail) make this very easy to do.
SMTP. This is another one that is really important if you're sending email to your users, but not so much if it's just an email to your self. Using php's regular mail() function the email will be sent via sendmail, which almost all *nix installs come with out of the box (especially servers). As a result, spam filters aren't very friendly towards it. If you have a regular SMTP server setup with a trusted MX record (or if you have a gmail account) you can send through that using SMTP, which will help reduce the chances of your mail being flagged as spam.
In addition to just PHPMailer Zend_Mail is a good one to check out to (it's part of the Zend Framework). However that may be a bit much for a simple contact form.
PHPMailer is my choice because it allows me to send SMTP e-mails to google without installing any libraries or configuring a mailserver, that way I don't have to worry about spam-related problems.