PHPMailer is failing on Travis builds - php

Question

i have been working on php7 upgrade and also moved phpmailer to be loaded via composer.
we have a build system that is tested on Travis. we use grunt to run selenium tests.
when i test locally (grunt test) all tests pass, but when i push to Travis (via GitHub) there are some tests that are failing.
tests that fail return following message (in Travis log after setting SMTPDebug to 3):
2018-06-27 12:39:23 Connection: opening to smtp.sendgrid.net:587, timeout=300, options=array()
2018-06-27 12:43:37 Connection failed. Error #2: stream_socket_client(): unable to connect to smtp.sendgrid.net:587 (Connection timed out) [/var/www/includes/phpmailer/phpmailer/src/SMTP.php line 325]
2018-06-27 12:43:37 SMTP ERROR: Failed to connect to server: Connection timed out (110)
SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting
strange thing is that there are some passing tests that use the same code as failing tests. we instantiate our wrapper object with the same attributes in each of the scripts that are sending mail.
this is the except from the code that is failing to send mail:
$mail->sendMsg($config->getOpt('site_name'),
$config->getOpt('site_email'),
$userInfo['userName'],
$userInfo['userEmail'],
Strings::strPad(_('Purchase confirmation from'),1,' ',STR_PAD_RIGHT) . $config->getOpt('site_name'),
$boostPurchaseConfirmMsg,
nl2br($boostPurchaseConfirmMsg));
this is the except from the the code that is sending mail:
$mail->sendMsg($config->getOpt('site_name'),
$config->getOpt('site_email'),
$_POST['userEmail'],
$_POST['userEmail'],
Strings::strPad(_('Welcome to')) . $config->getOpt('site_name') . '!',
$registerMsg,
nl2br($registerMsg));
this is the function within our wrapper object that is actually sending mails:
public function sendMsg($fromName, $fromEmail, $toName, $toEmail, $subject, $messageText, $messageHTML = null, $CCs = null)
{
$mail = new PHPMailer(true);
if (false === $mail) {
throw new gException('No PHPMailer object available');
}
try {
$mail->isSMTP(); // Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->SMTPDebug = 3;
$mail->Host = $this->host; // Specify main and backup SMTP servers
$mail->Port = $this->port;
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = $this->username; // SMTP username
$mail->Password = $this->password; // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$mail->From = $fromEmail;
$mail->FromName = $fromName;
$mail->addAddress($toEmail, $toName); // Add a recipient
$mail->addReplyTo($fromEmail, $fromName);
if (null !== $CCs) {
if (is_array($CCs)) {
foreach ($CCs AS $cc) {
$mail->addBCC($cc);
}
} else {
$mail->addBCC($CCs);
}
}
$mail->WordWrap = 50;
$mail->isHTML(true);
if (strlen($messageText) < 1) {
$messageText = $messageHTML;
}
if (strlen($messageHTML) < 1) {
$messageHTML = $messageText;
}
$mail->Subject = $subject;
$mail->Body = nl2br($messageHTML);
$mail->AltBody = strip_tags($messageText);
return $mail->send();
} catch (PHPMailerException $e) {
throw new gException('PHPMailer exception message : ' . $e->errorMessage());
}
}
please help. i have already tried setting mock smtp service on Travis, but it doesn't matter. i reviewed if we are using correct port. i did all the things that phpmailer wiki suggest to try troubleshooting.
i repeat tests are passing locally, so everything is working. Travis is holding me hostage.
UPDATE
this might seem misleading, the solution, as it turns out, was to not check PHPMailer success on sending mails. we had the agreement that we will not inform the user that mails are not sent, since they are only informative, instead we will be logging exceptions for further analysis.
do not test mail success on travis, it will fail. travis doesn't allow outbound SMTP traffic.
use the strategies proposed by the PHPMailer troubleshooting wiki.
thank you #Syncro