PhpMailer ~30 seconds delay on send - php

Question

Ok so I have few problems with PhpMailer.
There is a delay of about 30 seconds before $mail->send is being executed.
2019-07-23 13:43:55 Connection: opening to
smtp.gmail.com:587, timeout=300, options=array() 2019-07-23
13:44:16 Connection: opened 2019-07-23 13:44:16 SERVER
etc...(some list of parameters).
The code being used for registering users. I instantiated Mail class inside model method and then called that method inside Controller following by function that redirects after successful login. I also get headers already sent error.
2019-07-23 13:44:17 Connection: closed Message has
been sent Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers
already sent by (output started at
C:\xampp\htdocs\log\vendor\phpmailer\phpmailer\src\SMTP.php:257) in
C:\xampp\htdocs\log\App\Core\Controller.php on line 43
My code:
Mail class:
class Mail
{
public function sendMail($to, $subject, $text, $html)
{
$mail = new PHPMailer(true);
try {
//Server settings
$mail->SMTPDebug = 3;
$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'wuwu5431#gmail.com';
$mail->Password = 'Password';
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$mail->Port = 587;
//Recipients
$mail->setFrom('wuwu5431#gmail.com', 'John Smith');
$mail->addAddress($to, '');
$mail->addReplyTo('wuwu5431#gmail.com', 'Information($mail->addReplyTo)');
//Content
$mail->isHTML(true);
$mail->Subject = $subject;
$mail->Body = $text;
$mail->AltBody = $html . ' $html . This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients';
$mail->send();
echo 'Message has been sent';
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo 'Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: ', $mail->ErrorInfo;
}
}//end of method
}// end of class
Model(method):
public function sendActivationEmail($email)
{
$url = 'url';
$text = 'text';
$html = 'html';
$mail = new \App\Mail;
$mail->sendMail($email, 'Account activation', $text, $html);
}
Controller(method):
public function register()
{
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST'){
$_POST = filter_input_array(INPUT_POST, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
foreach($_POST as $key => $value){
$data[$key] = htmlspecialchars(strip_tags(trim($value)));
}
$this->userModel = new \App\Models\UserM;
if ($this->userModel->Register($data)) {
Flash::addMessage('Thank you for Registering with us');
$this->userModel->sendActivationEmail($data['email']);
$this->redirect('User/UserC/success');
}
}
}
Enviroment: win 7, xampp, localhost.

Answer 1

This is entirely normal - welcome to the world of SMTP.
SMTP can impose delays of up to 10 minutes at multiple points within a transaction, and for that reason it's not well suited use during page submission processing, though it's still very common to do that.
The way to handle it is to make it asynchronous (as far as your page is concerned), and there are multiple ways of doing that, for example stash your message in a queue that's picked up and sent by a separate process later (i.e. not holding up your page submission processing), or submit it directly to a local mail server, which will typically accept a submission in a few milliseconds, and deal with onward delivery for you.
Separate from this, these lines are probably wrong:
$mail->setFrom('wuwu5431#gmail.com', 'John Smith');
$mail->addAddress($to, '');
$mail->addReplyTo('wuwu5431#gmail.com', 'Information($mail->addReplyTo)');
If your from and reply-to address are the same, the reply-to will be ignored. If you don't have a name to go with the to address, just leave it off. Single-quoted strings do not do variable interpolation in PHP. You probably want just:
$mail->setFrom('wuwu5431#gmail.com', 'John Smith');
$mail->addAddress($to);