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Sending Messages

Quick Reference for Sending a Message

Sending a message is very straightforward. You create a Transport, use it to create the Mailer, then you use the Mailer to send the message.

When using send() the message will be sent just like it would be sent if you used your mail client. An integer is returned which includes the number of successful recipients. If none of the recipients could be sent to then zero will be returned, which equates to a boolean false. If you set two To: recipients and three Bcc: recipients in the message and all of the recipients are delivered to successfully then the value 5 will be returned:

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// Create the Transport
$transport = (new Swift_SmtpTransport('smtp.example.org', 25))
  ->setUsername('your username')
  ->setPassword('your password')
  ;

/*
You could alternatively use a different transport such as Sendmail:

// Sendmail
$transport = new Swift_SendmailTransport('/usr/sbin/sendmail -bs');
*/

// Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = new Swift_Mailer($transport);

// Create a message
$message = (new Swift_Message('Wonderful Subject'))
  ->setFrom(['john@doe.com' => 'John Doe'])
  ->setTo(['receiver@domain.org', 'other@domain.org' => 'A name'])
  ->setBody('Here is the message itself')
  ;

// Send the message
$result = $mailer->send($message);

Transport Types

Transports are the classes in Swift Mailer that are responsible for communicating with a service in order to deliver a Message. There are several types of Transport in Swift Mailer, all of which implement the Swift_Transport interface:

  • Swift_SmtpTransport: Sends messages over SMTP; Supports Authentication; Supports Encryption. Very portable; Pleasingly predictable results; Provides good feedback;
  • Swift_SendmailTransport: Communicates with a locally installed sendmail executable (Linux/UNIX). Quick time-to-run; Provides less-accurate feedback than SMTP; Requires sendmail installation;
  • Swift_LoadBalancedTransport: Cycles through a collection of the other Transports to manage load-reduction. Provides graceful fallback if one Transport fails (e.g. an SMTP server is down); Keeps the load on remote services down by spreading the work;
  • Swift_FailoverTransport: Works in conjunction with a collection of the other Transports to provide high-availability. Provides graceful fallback if one Transport fails (e.g. an SMTP server is down).

The SMTP Transport

The SMTP Transport sends messages over the (standardized) Simple Message Transfer Protocol. It can deal with encryption and authentication.

The SMTP Transport, Swift_SmtpTransport is without doubt the most commonly used Transport because it will work on 99% of web servers (I just made that number up, but you get the idea). All the server needs is the ability to connect to a remote (or even local) SMTP server on the correct port number (usually 25).

SMTP servers often require users to authenticate with a username and password before any mail can be sent to other domains. This is easily achieved using Swift Mailer with the SMTP Transport.

SMTP is a protocol -- in other words it's a "way" of communicating a job to be done (i.e. sending a message). The SMTP protocol is the fundamental basis on which messages are delivered all over the internet 7 days a week, 365 days a year. For this reason it's the most "direct" method of sending messages you can use and it's the one that will give you the most power and feedback (such as delivery failures) when using Swift Mailer.

Because SMTP is generally run as a remote service (i.e. you connect to it over the network/internet) it's extremely portable from server-to-server. You can easily store the SMTP server address and port number in a configuration file within your application and adjust the settings accordingly if the code is moved or if the SMTP server is changed.

Some SMTP servers -- Google for example -- use encryption for security reasons. Swift Mailer supports using both ssl (SMTPS = SMTP over TLS) and tls (SMTP with STARTTLS) encryption settings.

Using the SMTP Transport

The SMTP Transport is easy to use. Most configuration options can be set with the constructor.

To use the SMTP Transport you need to know which SMTP server your code needs to connect to. Ask your web host if you're not sure. Lots of people ask me who to connect to -- I really can't answer that since it's a setting that's extremely specific to your hosting environment.

A connection to the SMTP server will be established upon the first call to send():

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// Create the Transport
$transport = new Swift_SmtpTransport('smtp.example.org', 25);

// Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = new Swift_Mailer($transport);

/*
It's also possible to use multiple method calls

$transport = (new Swift_SmtpTransport())
  ->setHost('smtp.example.org')
  ->setPort(25)
  ;
*/
Encrypted SMTP

You can use ssl (SMTPS) or tls (STARTTLS) encryption with the SMTP Transport by specifying it as a parameter or with a method call:

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// Create the Transport
// Option #1: SMTPS = SMTP over TLS (always encrypted):
$transport = new Swift_SmtpTransport('smtp.example.org', 587, 'ssl');
// Option #2: SMTP with STARTTLS (best effort encryption):
$transport = new Swift_SmtpTransport('smtp.example.org', 587, 'tls');

// Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = new Swift_Mailer($transport);

A connection to the SMTP server will be established upon the first call to send(). The connection will be initiated with the correct encryption settings.

Note

For SMTPS or STARTTLS encryption to work your PHP installation must have appropriate OpenSSL transports wrappers. You can check if "tls" and/or "ssl" are present in your PHP installation by using the PHP function stream_get_transports().

Note

If you are using Mailcatcher, make sure you do not set the encryption for the Swift_SmtpTransport, since Mailcatcher does not support encryption.

Note

When in doubt, try ssl first for higher security, since the communication is always encrypted.

Note

Usually, port 587 or 465 is used for encrypted SMTP. Check the documentation of your mail provider.

SMTP with a Username and Password

Some servers require authentication. You can provide a username and password with setUsername() and setPassword() methods:

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// Create the Transport the call setUsername() and setPassword()
$transport = (new Swift_SmtpTransport('smtp.example.org', 25))
  ->setUsername('username')
  ->setPassword('password')
  ;

// Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = new Swift_Mailer($transport);

Your username and password will be used to authenticate upon first connect when send() are first used on the Mailer.

If authentication fails, an Exception of type Swift_TransportException will be thrown.

Note

If you need to know early whether or not authentication has failed and an Exception is going to be thrown, call the start() method on the created Transport.

The Sendmail Transport

The Sendmail Transport sends messages by communicating with a locally installed MTA -- such as sendmail.

The Sendmail Transport, Swift_SendmailTransport does not directly connect to any remote services. It is designed for Linux servers that have sendmail installed. The Transport starts a local sendmail process and sends messages to it. Usually the sendmail process will respond quickly as it spools your messages to disk before sending them.

The Transport is named the Sendmail Transport for historical reasons (sendmail was the "standard" UNIX tool for sending e-mail for years). It will send messages using other transfer agents such as Exim or Postfix despite its name, provided they have the relevant sendmail wrappers so that they can be started with the correct command-line flags.

It's a common misconception that because the Sendmail Transport returns a result very quickly it must therefore deliver messages to recipients quickly -- this is not true. It's not slow by any means, but it's certainly not faster than SMTP when it comes to getting messages to the intended recipients. This is because sendmail itself sends the messages over SMTP once they have been quickly spooled to disk.

The Sendmail Transport has the potential to be just as smart of the SMTP Transport when it comes to notifying Swift Mailer about which recipients were rejected, but in reality the majority of locally installed sendmail instances are not configured well enough to provide any useful feedback. As such Swift Mailer may report successful deliveries where they did in fact fail before they even left your server.

You can run the Sendmail Transport in two different modes specified by command line flags:

  • "-bs" runs in SMTP mode so theoretically it will act like the SMTP Transport
  • "-t" runs in piped mode with no feedback, but theoretically faster, though not advised

You can think of the Sendmail Transport as a sort of asynchronous SMTP Transport -- though if you have problems with delivery failures you should try using the SMTP Transport instead. Swift Mailer isn't doing the work here, it's simply passing the work to somebody else (i.e. sendmail).

Using the Sendmail Transport

To use the Sendmail Transport you simply need to call new Swift_SendmailTransport() with the command as a parameter.

To use the Sendmail Transport you need to know where sendmail or another MTA exists on the server. Swift Mailer uses a default value of /usr/sbin/sendmail, which should work on most systems.

You specify the entire command as a parameter (i.e. including the command line flags). Swift Mailer supports operational modes of "-bs" (default) and "-t".

Note

If you run sendmail in "-t" mode you will get no feedback as to whether or not sending has succeeded. Use "-bs" unless you have a reason not to.

A sendmail process will be started upon the first call to send(). If the process cannot be started successfully an Exception of type Swift_TransportException will be thrown:

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// Create the Transport
$transport = new Swift_SendmailTransport('/usr/sbin/exim -bs');

// Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = new Swift_Mailer($transport);

Available Methods for Sending Messages

The Mailer class offers one method for sending Messages -- send().

When a message is sent in Swift Mailer, the Mailer class communicates with whichever Transport class you have chosen to use.

Each recipient in the message should either be accepted or rejected by the Transport. For example, if the domain name on the email address is not reachable the SMTP Transport may reject the address because it cannot process it. send() will return an integer indicating the number of accepted recipients.

Note

It's possible to find out which recipients were rejected -- we'll cover that later in this chapter.

Using the send() Method

The send() method of the Swift_Mailer class sends a message using exactly the same logic as your Desktop mail client would use. Just pass it a Message and get a result.

The message will be sent just like it would be sent if you used your mail client. An integer is returned which includes the number of successful recipients. If none of the recipients could be sent to then zero will be returned, which equates to a boolean false. If you set two To: recipients and three Bcc: recipients in the message and all of the recipients are delivered to successfully then the value 5 will be returned:

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// Create the Transport
$transport = new Swift_SmtpTransport('localhost', 25);

// Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = new Swift_Mailer($transport);

// Create a message
$message = (new Swift_Message('Wonderful Subject'))
  ->setFrom(['john@doe.com' => 'John Doe'])
  ->setTo(['receiver@domain.org', 'other@domain.org' => 'A name'])
  ->setBody('Here is the message itself')
  ;

// Send the message
$numSent = $mailer->send($message);

printf("Sent %d messages\n", $numSent);

/* Note that often that only the boolean equivalent of the
   return value is of concern (zero indicates FALSE)

if ($mailer->send($message))
{
  echo "Sent\n";
}
else
{
  echo "Failed\n";
}

*/

Sending Emails in Batch

If you want to send a separate message to each recipient so that only their own address shows up in the To: field, follow the following recipe:

  • Create a Transport from one of the provided Transports -- Swift_SmtpTransport, Swift_SendmailTransport, or one of the aggregate Transports.
  • Create an instance of the Swift_Mailer class, using the Transport as it's constructor parameter.
  • Create a Message.
  • Iterate over the recipients and send message via the send() method on the Mailer object.

Each recipient of the messages receives a different copy with only their own email address on the To: field.

Make sure to add only valid email addresses as recipients. If you try to add an invalid email address with setTo(), setCc() or setBcc(), Swift Mailer will throw a Swift_RfcComplianceException.

If you add recipients automatically based on a data source that may contain invalid email addresses, you can prevent possible exceptions by validating the addresses using Egulias\EmailValidator\EmailValidator (a dependency that is installed with Swift Mailer) and only adding addresses that validate. Another way would be to wrap your setTo(), setCc() and setBcc() calls in a try-catch block and handle the Swift_RfcComplianceException in the catch block.

Handling invalid addresses properly is especially important when sending emails in large batches since a single invalid address might cause an unhandled exception and stop the execution or your script early.

Note

In the following example, two emails are sent. One to each of receiver@domain.org and other@domain.org. These recipients will not be aware of each other:

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// Create the Transport
$transport = new Swift_SmtpTransport('localhost', 25);

// Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = new Swift_Mailer($transport);

// Create a message
$message = (new Swift_Message('Wonderful Subject'))
  ->setFrom(['john@doe.com' => 'John Doe'])
  ->setBody('Here is the message itself')
  ;

// Send the message
$failedRecipients = [];
$numSent = 0;
$to = ['receiver@domain.org', 'other@domain.org' => 'A name'];

foreach ($to as $address => $name)
{
  if (is_int($address)) {
    $message->setTo($name);
  } else {
    $message->setTo([$address => $name]);
  }

  $numSent += $mailer->send($message, $failedRecipients);
}

printf("Sent %d messages\n", $numSent);

Finding out Rejected Addresses

It's possible to get a list of addresses that were rejected by the Transport by using a by-reference parameter to send().

As Swift Mailer attempts to send the message to each address given to it, if a recipient is rejected it will be added to the array. You can pass an existing array, otherwise one will be created by-reference.

Collecting the list of recipients that were rejected can be useful in circumstances where you need to "prune" a mailing list for example when some addresses cannot be delivered to.

Getting Failures By-reference

Collecting delivery failures by-reference with the send() method is as simple as passing a variable name to the method call:

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$mailer = new Swift_Mailer( ... );

$message = (new Swift_Message( ... ))
  ->setFrom( ... )
  ->setTo([
    'receiver@bad-domain.org' => 'Receiver Name',
    'other@domain.org' => 'A name',
    'other-receiver@bad-domain.org' => 'Other Name'
  ))
  ->setBody( ... )
  ;

// Pass a variable name to the send() method
if (!$mailer->send($message, $failures))
{
  echo "Failures:";
  print_r($failures);
}

/*
Failures:
Array (
  0 => receiver@bad-domain.org,
  1 => other-receiver@bad-domain.org
)
*/

If the Transport rejects any of the recipients, the culprit addresses will be added to the array provided by-reference.

Note

If the variable name does not yet exist, it will be initialized as an empty array and then failures will be added to that array. If the variable already exists it will be type-cast to an array and failures will be added to it.

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