PHPMailer Mailer Error: Message body empty - php

Question

I'm trying to get the basic example working for PHPMailer.
All I done was upload the whole PHPMailer_5.2.2 folder, configured the page below as per the code you see and I keep getting Mailer Error: Message body empty, but I can clearly see the contents.html file has html in it and isn't empty. This is the example file I'm using from the PHPMailer PHPMailer_5.2.2/examples/test_smtp_gmail_basic.php
I tried using the settings I have in Outlook for Gmail that works, I know my username and password, the SMTP port is 587 and it's set to TLS, I tried replacing SSL with TLS in the code below, I still get same error.
I also tried the following code, which has been suggested:
changed this:
$mail->MsgHTML($body);
to this
$mail->body = $body;
I still got same error, is there something else I need to configure? It's my first time using PHPMailer, I can get the standard php mail working, but I want to try this because the page I'm going to be emailing has lots of html and I don't want to have to go through all the html and enter character escapes so someone recommending using this.
<?php
//error_reporting(E_ALL);
error_reporting(E_STRICT);
date_default_timezone_set('America/Toronto');
require_once('../class.phpmailer.php');
//include("class.smtp.php"); // optional, gets called from within class.phpmailer.php if not already loaded
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$body = file_get_contents('contents.html');
$body = preg_replace('/[\]/','',$body);
$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP
$mail->Host = "smtp.gmail.com"; // SMTP server
$mail->SMTPDebug = 1; // enables SMTP debug information (for testing)
// 1 = errors and messages
// 2 = messages only
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // enable SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl"; // sets the prefix to the servier
$mail->Host = "smtp.gmail.com"; // sets GMAIL as the SMTP server
$mail->Port = 587; // set the SMTP port for the GMAIL server
$mail->Username = "xxx#gmail.com"; // GMAIL username
$mail->Password = "xxx"; // GMAIL password
$mail->SetFrom('xxx#gmail.com', 'First Last');
$mail->AddReplyTo("xxx","First Last");
$mail->Subject = "PHPMailer Test Subject via smtp (Gmail), basic";
$mail->AltBody = "To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer!"; // optional, comment out and test
$mail->MsgHTML($body);
$address = "xxx.net";
$mail->AddAddress($address, "John Doe");
//$mail->AddAttachment("images/phpmailer.gif"); // attachment
//$mail->AddAttachment("images/phpmailer_mini.gif"); // attachment
if(!$mail->Send()) {
echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
echo "Message sent!";
}
?>

Answer 1

I had the same problem and I solved just changing:
This:
$mail->body = 'Hello, this is my message.';
Into this:
$mail->Body = 'Hello, this is my message.';
body into Body what a little mistake!

Answer 2

PHPMailer->MsgHTML() tries to do something clever with fixing non-absolute URLs, but for me too it just returns empty.
$mail->IsHTML(true);
$mail->Body=$body;

Answer 3

First I had to enable the ssl extension, (which I have obtained from another post on this site). To do that, open php.ini and enable php_openssl.dll by changing
;extension=php_openssl.dll
to
extension=php_openssl.dll
Now, enable tls and use port 587. Then comment out the preg_replace.
Finally, I was able to make it show up in my gmail "Sent" file, although I was expecting to see it in my "Inbox".
This site is awesome! Thanks.

Answer 4

When setting $mail->Body equal to variable the body is empty.
When I attach a string to the body everything works fine.
The solution is to strval() a variable containing Your HTML code.
$message;//Your HTML message code
$mail->Body = strval($message);