Limit email deployment application wide on non-production environments - php

Question

I am developing my first Laravel app and want to avoid accidentally deploying emails from my dev and local environments to real people, other than myself. My goal is to have a list of comma-separated email addresses in my .env file that the Laravel's Mailable checks against when APP_ENV is not "production".
# .env
APP_ENV=local
EMAIL_WHITELIST=test#example.com
I checked the send method in vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Mail\Mailable.php and could modify the code there but have an eerie feeling that I am not supposed to touch that file.
# vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Mail\Mailable.php
public function send($mailer)
{
$this->withLocale($this->locale, function () use ($mailer) {
Container::getInstance()->call([$this, 'build']);
$mailer = $mailer instanceof MailFactory
? $mailer->mailer($this->mailer)
: $mailer;
return $mailer->send($this->buildView(), $this->buildViewData(), function ($message) {
$this->buildFrom($message)
->buildRecipients($message)
->buildSubject($message)
->runCallbacks($message)
->buildAttachments($message);
});
});
}
Thanks!

Answer 1

One option is to create an Event Listener and register it with Laravel's MessageSending event. This allows you to perform all manner of actions on each outgoing message before it is sent.
App\Providers\EventServiceProvider
protected $listen = [
'Illuminate\Mail\Events\MessageSending' => [
'App\Listeners\PrepareMessageForSending'
],
];
App\Listeners\PrepareMessageForSending
class PrepareMessageForSending
{
public function handle(MessageSending $event)
{
if (env('APP_ENV') !== 'production') {
// for example, you could redirect everything to a mail trap account
$event->message->setTo('mailtrap#example.com');
}
return $event->message;
}
}