CakePHP Catch Invalid Email - php

Question

I am trying to send email invitations with CakePHP (2.3.6) where a User enters a comma separated list of email addresses into an input field.
Currently, I can send emails without an issue as long as there is no invalid email address. However, I tried adding a Try/Catch to catch errors if there was a bad email, but my code is never hitting the catch.
Here is what I have
try {
if($Email->send()) {
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Email successfully sent'), 'flash/success');
} else {
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Could not invite guests. Please, try again.'), 'flash/error');
$this->redirect($this->referer());
}
} catch(Exception $e) {
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Could not invite guests. Probably a bad email. Please, try again.'), 'flash/error');
$this->redirect($this->referer());
}
$this->redirect($this->referer());
When I enter an invalid email with debugging on, I get the following error:
Invalid email: "foo"
Error: An Internal Error Has Occurred.
And when debugging is off:
An Internal Error Has Occurred.
I assumed there is something wrong with my Try / Catch, but it looks right to me. Is there some other method I should be going through to catch CakePHP errors?
Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

Invalid email addresses cause the exception to be thrown right away when they are set. This occurs before the send method is called, so it is not reaching the try block you posted.
This is from a component I have written that handles sending several different emails for our system here. I have wrapped each address setting in a try block so the offending address can be more easily tracked down, but if you did not want that much detail you could wrap all of them in a single block. You can examine the message from the exception with the getMessage method to see the offending address string. This works for me with Cake 2.3:
$email = new CakeEmail();
//...
// set to for email
try
{
$email->to($recipient);
}
catch(SocketException $e)
{
$result['problem'] = 'Recipient Address';
$result['message'] = $e->getMessage();
return $result;
}
// set cc for email - not required
try
{
if($cclist != '') $email->cc(preg_split('/, */', $cclist));
}
catch(SocketException $e)
{
$result['problem'] = 'CC List';
$result['message'] = $e->getMessage();
return $result;
}

Answer 2

Check where exactly the exception causing this error is thrown, it is most likely not in the try block you've posted, but in one of the CakeEmail methods (from, sender, replyTo, etc...) that validates the address.
That being said, you should probably either wrap the single CakeEmail method calls into try catch blocks (in case you want to respond with proper error messages depending on which value exactly is wrong), or maybe use a single one that wraps all operations and output a generic error message.
Also note that CakeEmail::send() returns an array (containing header and message data), not a boolean, determining whether an E-Mail was send successfully must be done using try...catch, ie when no exception is being thrown, then the E-Mail was probably sent successfully.
Unfortunately the Cookbook is missing some proper examples. Here's some untested example code that should illustrate how it might work:
$Email = new CakeEmail();
try
{
$Email->from($from);
$Email->to($to);
// etc...
try
{
$Email->send();
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Email successfully sent'), 'flash/success');
}
catch(SocketException $e)
{
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Could not invite guests. Please, try again.'), 'flash/error');
}
}
catch(SocketException $e)
{
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Bad input'), 'flash/error');
}
$this->redirect($this->referer());