Problem using CodeIgniter to send emails through Gmail? - php

Question

I'm trying to send an email in codeigniter via my Gmail account. My current code looks like this:
$config = Array(
'protocol' => 'smtp',
'smtp_host' => 'ssl://smtp.googlemail.com',
'smtp_port' => 465,
'smtp_user' => 'me#gmail.com',
'smtp_pass' => 'my_gmail_password',
'mailtype' => 'html',
'charset' => 'iso-8859-1'
);
$this->load->library('email', $config);
$this->email->set_newline("\r\n");
$this->email->from('me#gmail.com', 'Me');
$this->email->to("me#gmail.com");
$this->email->subject('A test email from CodeIgniter using Gmail');
$this->email->message("A test email from CodeIgniter using Gmail");
$this->email->send();
However, this gives me the following errors:
Message: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to ssl://smtp.googlemail.com:465 (Connection timed out)
Filename: libraries/Email.php
Message: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource
Message: fgets(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource
Any help to resolve this issue would be much appreciated! Thanks!
Note: I can assure you that my Gmail email & password are correct

Answer 1

The error means you cannot connect the the SMTP address you've entered.
you should use: smtp.gmail.com
Check following link for reference:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13287

Answer 2

You could download a nice little sparks package by "Shawn McCool" that utilizes "Swift-Mailer".
Check out his site for install instructions
Here is my configuration for sending out email's using a DRY approach(PHP 5.3.0 required!).
Config
|--mailer[dot]php
$config['swift_email_server'] = 'ssl://smtp.googlemail.com';
$config['swift_email_port'] = 465;
$config['swift_email_username'] = '######';
$config['swift_email_password'] = '######';
Libarary
|--MY_Email
class MY_Email extends CI_Email {
public function __construct(){
parent::__construct();
}
/**
* =========================================================================
* Parse's html email templates - initalised via swift-mailer
*
* #param mixed $data
* #param string $template
* #return html
*
* =========================================================================
*/
public function send_mail($data, $template){
//Anonymous functions are available since PHP 5.3.0
$callback = function ($matches) use ($data){
return ( isset($data[$matches[1]]) )
? $data[$matches[1]]
: $matches[0];
};
//Finds any matches in brackets [] and replaces them with data passed via callback
return preg_replace_callback(
'/\[(.*?)\]/',
$callback,
read_file(EMAIL_TEMPLATES . $template));
}
}
Email templates location defined in index.php
define('EMAIL_TEMPLATES', 'emailtemplates');
Controller
|--MY_Controller
class MY_Controller extends MX_Controller{
protected $user;
protected $swiftMailer = NULL;
public function __construct(){
parent::__construct();
$this->user = ($this->session->userdata('uid'))
? Member::find($this->session->userdata('uid')) : array();
$this->setup_profile();
$this->form_validation->set_error_delimiters('<p class="form-error">', '</p>');
}
public function setup_profile(){
$sections = array(
'config' => FALSE,
'http_headers' => FALSE,
'queries' => FALSE,
'memory_usage' => FALSE
);
$this->output->set_profiler_sections($sections);
if(ENVIRONMENT === 'development'){
$this->output->enable_profiler(TRUE);
}
}
protected function prep_email($data, $template){
$message =
Swift_Message::newInstance('Type your heading here...')
->setFrom($data['email_address'])
->setTo(array($this->config->item('primary_email'), $data['email_address']))
->setBody( $this->email->send_mail($data, $template))
->setContentType('text/html');
return ( $this->swiftMailer->send($message) );
}
}
Module
|--services // simple test module
public function arrange() {
$config = array(
array('field'=>'service', 'label'=>'Service', 'rules'=>'trim|required|max_lenght[128]'),
array('field'=>'num', 'label'=>'Numer of Sessions', 'rules'=>'trim|required|numeric'),
array('field'=>'request_date', 'label'=>'Request_date', 'rules'=>'trim|required'),
array('field'=>'note', 'label'=>'Note', 'rules'=>'trim|max_lenght[500]')
);
$this->form_validation->CI =& $this;
$this->form_validation->set_rules($config);
if($this->form_validation->run($this)){
$service = Service::find($this->input->post('service'));
if((int)$this->input->post('num') > 1){
$potential = ( $this->input->post('num') * $service->price );
}else{
$potential = $this->input->post('num');
}
$insert = array(
'service_id' => $this->input->post('service'),
'num' => $this->input->post('num'),
'request_date' => $this->input->post('request_date'),
'note' => serialize( $this->input->post('note') ),
'potential_income' => $potential,
'member_id' => $this->user->id,
'status' => 'pending'
);
$emaildata = array(
'service' => $service->slug,
'num' => $insert['num'],
'request_date' => $insert['request_date'],
'note' => $insert['note'],
'potential_income' => $potential,
'email_address' => $this->user->email_address,
'status' => 'pending',
'fullname' => $this->user->firstname . ' ' . $this->user->surname,
'message_sent' => date('M d h:iA'),
'site_link' => ''
);
if(Meeting::create($insert)){
if(parent::prep_email($emaildata, 'request_meeting[dot]html')){
$this->session->set_flashdata('success' ,'Request has been sent! You will recieve an email shortly from Paul');
//redirect('/');
}else{
$this->session->set_flashdata('error', 'Email service seems to be down at the moment');
//redirect('/');
}
}else{
$this->session->set_flashdata('error', 'Unable to request meeting at this time');
//redirect('/');
}
}else{
$this->meetings_form();
}
Hope this helps!