This is quite a simple component that integrates PHPMailer with CakePHP. Save the following code to /app/controllers/components/email.php
<?php
App::import('Vendor', 'PhpMailer', array('file' => 'phpmailer' . DS . 'class.phpmailer.php'));
/*
Depends on "unhtml"
*/
class EmailComponent extends PHPMailer
{
// phpmailer
var $Mailer = 'sendmail'; // choose 'sendmail', 'mail', 'smtp'
var $unhtml_bin = '/usr/bin/unhtml';
// component
var $controller;
function startup( &$controller )
{
$this->controller = &$controller;
}
function renderBody($view)
{
// render the view and use its output to set the body text of the email
$this->Body = $this->controller->render('emails/' . $view, 'email');
// reset the output of the controller
$this->controller->output = '';
// create plain text version of the email
//
// create temporary files
$htmlfile = tempnam(TMP, 'htmlfile');
$textfile = tempnam(TMP, 'textfile');
// write html to temporary file
file_put_contents($htmlfile, $this->Body);
// convert the html file to plain text
$cmd = "cat $htmlfile | $this->unhtml_bin > $textfile";
system($cmd);
// set the plain text body of the email
$this->AltBody = file_get_contents($textfile);
// remove temporary files
unlink($htmlfile);
unlink($textfile);
}
}
?>
In addition to that, make sure phpmailer is installed in /app/vendors/phpmailer. I just extracted the phpmailer archive in /app/vendors/ and created a symlink:
$ tar xzf PHPMailer_v5.0.2.tar.gz
$ ln -s PHPMailer_v5.0.2 phpmailer
Usage
In your controller code, make sure the component is included by adding it to the components array:
var $components = array('Email');
In app/views/layouts, create a new layout called email.ctp. It should contain something like:
<html> <body> <?php echo $content_for_layout; ?> </body> </html>
Let’s send some emails!
In controller snippet, the renderBody(‘test’) call will create a html email from the view in app/views/users/emails/test.ctp. Additionally, a plain text version will be generated using ‘unhtml’. Unhtml has a package in the Ubuntu / Debian repository.
The action works just like rendering a normal view. The $this->Email object is just an instance of PHPMailer and all PHPMailers’ methods and properties apply.
function testmail()
{
// *Some notes*
// Email methods: http://phpmailer.worxware.com/index.php?pg=methods
// Email properties: http://phpmailer.worxware.com/index.php?pg=properties
//
// Email configuration is done in /app/controllers/components/email.php
$this->set(compact('some', 'vars'));
// the email content is just a (html) view in app/views/{controller}/emails/testmail.ctp
$this->Email->renderBody('test');
// subject
$this->Email->Subject = 'Test from example.com';
// sender
$this->Email->SetFrom('test@example.com', 'Test');
// recipients
$this->Email->AddAddress('joe@example.com', 'Joe');
$this->Email->AddAddress('jane@example.com', 'Jane');
// send!
$this->Email->Send();
}