CodeIgniter unable to send email using PHP mail()

Question

I'm trying to send an e-mail with Codeigniter like this:

$this->load->library('email');

$this->email->from("[email protected]");
$this->email->reply_to("[email protected]");
$this->email->to("[email protected]");
$this->email->subject("Test mail");
$this->email->message("Email body");
$this->email->set_alt_message("Email body txt");
$this->email->send();

and I got this on the email debugger: Unable to send email using PHP mail(). Your server might not be configured to send mail using this method.

If I do e simple PHP mail() function with the same addresses, it works but when I use CodeIgniter it gives me the error. So why would it work with simple mail() but not with CodeIgniter ? Any ideas ?

Thanks.

Panettone

which protocol are you using? – Atlanta

The reference in PHP mail() form doesn't complete sending e-mail generally applies to the CodeIgniter wrapper as well. – Carlock

Answer 1

Do you have an email.php file in your config folder? Maybe there's a problem with your configuration in there.

Lyford

Yes, I do have an email.php config, it's default and holds only these: $config['mailtype'] = 'html'; $config['charset'] = 'utf-8'; $config['newline'] = '\r\n'; – Panettone

Maybe you should try $config['mailtype'] = 'text'; The mailtype html already caused some problems for me. Or try deleting the whole config file to use default settings. – Lyford

I will try that, thanks. But I shouldn't have this problem, I want to be able to send HTML message if needed. And I can do it with mail(), and it's bad that I can't do it with such large framework. I still wonder if I am doing something wrong. – Panettone

$config['protocol'] = 'sendmail'; => $config['protocol'] = 'mail'; – Chelton

Answer 2

Had similar issue.

That's working code from the controller :

        $config = array();
        $config['useragent']           = "CodeIgniter";
        $config['mailpath']            = "/usr/bin/sendmail"; // or "/usr/sbin/sendmail"
        $config['protocol']            = "smtp";
        $config['smtp_host']           = "localhost";
        $config['smtp_port']           = "25";
        $config['mailtype'] = 'html';
        $config['charset']  = 'utf-8';
        $config['newline']  = "\r\n";
        $config['wordwrap'] = TRUE;

        $this->load->library('email');

        $this->email->initialize($config);

        $this->email->from($fromEmail, $fromName);
        $this->email->to($email);

        $this->email->subject('Тест Email');
        $this->email->message($this->load->view('email/'.$type.'-html', $data, TRUE));

        $this->email->send();

Vidrine

The location of sendmail solved my issue, I was using the default bin when it was actually in sbin – Ethiopia

Answer 3

Clearly, there does not seem to be a definitive 'one size fits all' answer. What worked for me was changing

$config['protocol'] = 'smtp';

TO:

$config['protocol'] = 'mail';

Hope this helps...

Kosaka

Huh, funny. What worked for me was exactly the opposite, i.e., changing the protocol from 'mail' to 'smtp' (and adding 'smtp_host' and 'smtp_port' as shown in @Fedir's answer). As stated, one size does not fit all -- mainly because each of is is doing this in a different server environment. Moral of the story: look at all of these answers, and try variations. (The clue for me was noting that the documentation of the PHP mail() function -- which works for me -- mentions in passing that it uses SMTP.) – Botnick

If you are using smtp, make sure to also set smtp_host. localhost should probably be the default smtp_host for the framework. – Jellicoe

Answer 4

Nobody seemed to really find a definitive answer, so I did some digging around and found out why.

in system/libraries/Email.php, first look at line 1552:

if ( ! mail($this->_recipients, $this->_subject, $this->_finalbody, $this->_header_str, "-f ".$this->clean_email($this->_headers['From'])))

it seems to send everything all peachy like. I had the exact same symptoms too. To see if I was crazy, i inserted immediately before...

mail($this->_recipients, $this->_subject, $this->_finalbody)

so I basically removed all the headers and let PHP put in the defaults. Bingo! Without CI's headers, it works. With the CI headers, it doesn't. So what is it?

Digging around some more, I looked up to where html is initialized and used. Turns out it doesn't really do anything until around 1046, where it builds the message body.

from line 1048:

if ($this->send_multipart === FALSE)
{
    $hdr .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=" . $this->charset . $this->newline;
    $hdr .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable";
}
else
{
    $hdr .= "Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"" . $this->_alt_boundary . "\"" . $this->newline . $this->newline;

    $body .= $this->_get_mime_message() . $this->newline . $this->newline;
    $body .= "--" . $this->_alt_boundary . $this->newline;

    $body .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=" . $this->charset . $this->newline;
    $body .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: " . $this->_get_encoding() . $this->newline . $this->newline;
    $body .= $this->_get_alt_message() . $this->newline . $this->newline . "--" . $this->_alt_boundary . $this->newline;

    $body .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=" . $this->charset . $this->newline;
    $body .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable" . $this->newline . $this->newline;
}

Flipping send_multipart between TRUE and FALSE will make the mail class work or not work.

Looked through the Code Ignitor's email class docs reveals nothing. Going to line 52:

var $send_multipart = TRUE; // TRUE/FALSE - Yahoo does not like multipart alternative, so this is an override.  Set to FALSE for Yahoo.

So there you have it. Possibly an error in how CI does multipart messages? The hidden config preference

$config['send_multipart'] = FALSE;

in the email.php seems to do the trick.

Hall

Good point, and this comment from codeigniter email script "This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Your email application may not support this format." – Poisson

I found that the mail($this->_recipients, $this->_subject, $this->_finalbody) combined with the $config['send_multipart'] = FALSE; $config['mailpath'] = "/usr/sbin/sendmail"; Solved my issue. – Woolworth

Answer 5

Be sure domain name in

$this->email->from("myemail@**email.com**");

match to server domain name

Unfailing

This is the real solution. I was also about to post it too. – Grenadine

Answer 6

Add a protocol variable to the config array and assign it the value "sendmail". The email.php file in the config folder should read as shown below. Mine works like this:

$config['protocol'] = 'sendmail';
$config['mailtype'] = 'html';
$config['charset']  = 'utf-8';
$config['newline']  = "\r\n";

Cringe

Answer 7

Ensure that Apache can send emails.

To check your current sendmail status: sestatus -b | grep httpd_can_sendmail

Change it to this if it is off: sudo setsebool -P httpd_can_sendmail on

Ikkela

Answer 8

I read a comment in the file email.php :

// most documentation of sendmail using the "-f" flag lacks a space after it, however
        // we've encountered servers that seem to require it to be in place.
        return mail($this->_recipients, $this->_subject, $this->_finalbody, $this->_header_str, '-f '.$this->clean_email($this->_headers['Return-Path']));

"-f" flag - this problem!!!

Retinue

Answer 9

Had the same problem, Make sure your 'from' address is a valid email address.

Insubordinate

Answer 10

I had the same problem and though it seems silly to me now, I had some of the config array options capitalized when they all need to be lowercase:

was:

$mail_config['smtp_host'] = 'mail.example.com';
$mail_config['smtp_port'] = '587';
$mail_config['smtp_user'] = '[email protected]';
$mail_config['smtp_pass'] = 'password';
$mail_config['smtp_crypto'] = 'TLS'; //ERROR
$mail_config['protocol'] = 'SMTP'; //ERROR
$mail_config['mailtype'] = 'HTML'; //ERROR
$mail_config['send_multipart'] = FALSE;
$this->email->initialize($mail_config);

Fixed:

$mail_config['smtp_host'] = 'mail.example.com';
$mail_config['smtp_port'] = '587';
$mail_config['smtp_user'] = '[email protected]';
$mail_config['smtp_pass'] = 'password';
$mail_config['smtp_crypto'] = 'tls'; //FIXED
$mail_config['protocol'] = 'smtp'; //FIXED
$mail_config['mailtype'] = 'html'; //FIXED
$mail_config['send_multipart'] = FALSE;
$this->email->initialize($mail_config);

That worked for me

Rabies

Answer 11

Its worth saying that if you're on WAMP (Windows) you will need to have sendmail installed otherwise there is no default SMTP method of sending. I wanted to use Gmail but couldn't because there is simply no default mail mechanism.

Hardfeatured

Answer 12

    $config = Array(
        'protocol' => 'smtp',
        'smtp_host' => 'ssl://smtp.googlemail.com',
        'smtp_port' => 465,
        'smtp_user' => 'email',
        'smtp_pass' => 'pass',
        'mailtype'  => 'html',
        'charset'   => 'iso-8859-1'
    );

    $this->load->library('email',$config);
**$this->email->set_newline("\r\n");**  <- add this line
   this code worked for me.

Codi