Unable to send email with PHP - php

Question

Ok, I'm seriously stuck on this despite having previously asked a related question and having worked on this all morning.
The problem is basic - I cannot send email using PHP from a new app I'm starting. The mailhost is localhost and it does not require authentication. I can checkout a previous app I wrote that also uses the PHP mail function and it works. The php.ini file is the same in both cases, and both cases therefore use localhost.
Both the working app and the new app both have swiftmailer installed using composer, but in both the working example and in this example swiftmailer is not used.
Here is the actual code I want to work:
// Determine headers
$uid = md5(uniqid(time()));
$headers = "From: " . $this->fromAddress . " <" . $this->fromName . ">\r\n";
$headers.= "Reply-To: " . $this->fromAddress . " <" . $this->fromName . ">\r\n";
if ($this->cc != "") { $headers .= "CC: ".$this->cc."\r\n"; }
if ($this->bcc != "") { $headers .= "BCC: ".$this->bcc."\r\n"; }
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"" . $uid . "\"\r\n\r\n";
$headers .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n";
$headers .= "--" . $uid . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n\r\n";
$headers .= $this->body . "\r\n\r\n";
// Optionally attach a file
foreach ($this->attachments as $attachment) {
$fileName = basename($attachment);
$fileSize = filesize($attachment);
$handle = fopen($attachment, "r");
$content = fread($handle, $fileSize);
fclose($handle);
$content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
$headers .= "--" . $uid . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"" . $fileName . "\"\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"" . $fileName . "\"\r\n\r\n";
$headers .= $content."\r\n\r\n";
unlink($attachment);
}
// Conclude headers
$headers .= "--".$uid."--";
// Send the email
$mail_sent = mail($this->toAddress,$this->subject,'',$headers);
if (!$mail_sent) {
throw new Exception('Email failed to send');
}
This code throws the exception, "Email failed to send". I can confirm that $this->toAddress is a valid email address and that $this->subject is a valid subject, and that $this->fromAddress is a valid email address, and that $this->body is a valid body, only a few characters long.
In attempting to boil this down to the simplest example, I tried the following code:
<?php
// The message
$message = "Line 1\r\nLine 2\r\nLine 3";
// In case any of our lines are larger than 70 characters, we should use wordwrap()
$message = wordwrap($message, 70, "\r\n");
// Send
$result = mail('lowens#mycompany.com', 'My Subject', $message);
if (!$result) {
error_log("fail");
}
?>
That logs "fail".
Just to confirm that localhost works, I re-checked out code that works. Here's the code that works:
// Determine headers
$uid = md5(uniqid(time()));
$headers= "From: " . $login->getUser() . " <" . $login->getUserEmail() . ">\r\n";
$headers.= "Reply-To: " . $login->getUser() . " <" . $login->getUserEmail() . ">\r\n";
if ($bcc != "") { $headers .= "BCC: ".$bcc."\r\n"; }
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$uid."\"\r\n\r\n";
$headers .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n";
$headers .= "--".$uid."\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n\r\n";
$headers .= $message."\r\n\r\n";
// Optionally attach a file
foreach ($attachedFilePaths as $attachedFilePath) {
$fileName = basename($attachedFilePath);
$fileSize = filesize($attachedFilePath);
$handle = fopen($attachedFilePath, "r");
$content = fread($handle, $fileSize);
fclose($handle);
$content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
$headers .= "--".$uid."\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"".$fileName."\"\r\n"; // use different content types here
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$fileName."\"\r\n\r\n";
$headers .= $content."\r\n\r\n";
unlink($attachedFilePath);
}
$headers .= "--".$uid."--";
// Send the email
$mail_sent = #mail($toAddr,$subject,'',$headers);
// Save this email as a task
require_once('../classes/task.class.php');
$task = new Task();
$task->saveMailAsTask($CustomerId, $toAddr, $bcc, $subject, $message);
// This can be used to return a success or failure
if ($mail_sent) {
redirect("http://$domainName/admin/index.php?task=account&event=viewdetails&id=$CustomerId&emailSentOK=true&d=emailResponse");
} else {
redirect("http://$domainName/admin/index.php?task=account&event=viewdetails&id=$CustomerId&emailSentOK=false&d=emailResponse");
}
I have eliminated the mailhost (localhost) as the cause of the problem, and the PHP.ini file. The only other two sources of the problem I would suppose are in the code itself and in an unknown cause that I am ignorant of. The code looks fine to me...
What gives? And why the heck can't a decent error message come out of mail()?

Answer 1

Some things to check:
In your php.ini ensure that sendmail_path is set to the output of
which sendmail
and then set accordingly if not:
sendmail_path = '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t'
Try send a message with sendmail and make sure you are not blacklisted:
sendmail -v someone#someaddress.com "hello"
(CTR+D will send and you can see the response from the receiving server)

Answer 2

The problem was the from field. I was inverting the order of the name and address.
INCORRECT:
$headers = "From: " . $this->fromAddress . " <" . $this->fromName . ">\r\n";
$headers.= "Reply-To: " . $this->fromAddress . " <" . $this->fromName . ">\r\n";
CORRECT:
$headers = "From: " . $this->fromName . " <" . $this->fromAddress . ">\r\n";
$headers.= "Reply-To: " . $this->fromName . " <" . $this->fromAddress . ">\r\n";