Codeigniter & PHPMailer - php

Question

So I've been trying this for a day or two now. At first, I tried the built in codeigniter SMTP mail class, with no luck. In hope of fixing this problem, I turned to PHPMailer. And to my disappointment, there is still no luck.
I'm certain that all details are correct. I've even tried multiple SMTP servers, those of which include gmail and mandrill.
Here's the code that I am using (I have tried many different modified versions of this, but I'll give you the one that I'm currently using)
<?php
class thankyou extends CI_Controller {
function index()
{
$this->load->model('index');
$header = array(
'title' => 'Please Confirm',
'navigation' => $this->index->loadNavigation(),
);
$this->load->view('header', $header);
$this->load->library('My_PHPMailer');
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->IsSMTP(); // Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->Host = 'smtp.mandrillapp.com'; // Specify main and backup server
$mail->Port = 587; // Set the SMTP port
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = 'email#outlook.com'; // SMTP username
$mail->Password = 'password4mandrill'; // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls'; // Enable encryption, 'ssl' also accepted
$mail->SMTPDebug = 1;
$mail->From = 'hello#whatever.co.uk';
$mail->FromName = 'Whatever';
$mail->AddAddress('hello#whatever.co.uk', 'Josh Adams'); // Add a recipient // Name is optional
$mail->IsHTML(false); // Set email format to HTML
$mail->Subject = 'Here is the subject';
$mail->Body = 'This is the HTML message body <strong>in bold!</strong>';
$mail->AltBody = 'This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients';
if(!$mail->Send()) {
echo 'Message could not be sent.';
echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
exit;
}
}
}
?>
If need be, you can Test it here
I just get the error 2014-06-09 11:18:40 SMTP ERROR: Failed to connect to server: Connection timed out (110) SMTP connect() failed. Message could not be sent.Mailer Error: SMTP connect() failed.

Answer 1

Try with this:
$this->load->library('email');
$config['protocol'] = 'smtp';
$config['smtp_host'] = 'smtp.mandrillapp.com';
$config['smtp_user'] = 'email#outlook.com';
$config['smtp_pass'] = 'password4mandrill';
$config['smtp_port'] = 587;
$this->email->initialize($config);
$this->email->from('you#outlook.com');
$this->email->to('dest#mail.com');
$this->email->subject('Test');
$this->email->message('Message');
if($this->email->send()) {
echo 'Sent';
} else {
$this->email->print_debugger();
}
Full list of options: http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/libraries/email.html

Answer 2

Since Codeigniter have email helper you need not to use alternative way of complexity. You just load the helper and send mail using the following structure.
$name="some name";
$message="your text message";
// set email data
$this->load->library('email');
$this->email->set_mailtype("html");
$this->email->from($this->input->post('sender_email'), $name);
$this->email->to('destination_email');
$this->email->cc('alternative_email');
$this->email->subject('Enquiry');
$this->email->message($message);
$this->email->send();

Answer 3

The problem you're having is at a lower level than your script. SMTP connection failure means it's failing to even start talking to the server, so it has nothing to do with authentication or how you construct your message - all of them are gong to either call mail() or talk SMTP directly at some point and hit the same problem, as you're seeing.
The most likely explanation is that your DNS isn't working. Next I'd look at firewall issues, then make sure that fsockopen and stream_socket_client functions are not disabled in your php env.