Question

My CakePHP should send an email when a button is clicked, however it doesn’t. Also, the email will be displayed as a flash message if I run it in debug mode: ($this->Email->delivery = 'debug';).

Note: Email is set up to set up to use PHP mail() function.

Code to call the email function:

$this->_sendUpdateEmail( $this->Auth->user('id'), $about_id );

Email function

function _sendUpdateEmail($from_user_id, $about_id) {
    $fromUser = $this->User->read(null, $from_user_id);

    $users = $this->User->find('all', array(
        'conditions' => array('User.distribution =' => 1)
    ));

    # loop to send email to all users who are marked as on the distribution list
    for($i = 0, $size = sizeof($users); $i < $size; ++$i) { 
        $user = $users[$i]['User'];

        $this->Email->from = $fromUser['User']['email'];
        $this->Email->replyTo = $fromUser['User']['email'];
        $this->Email->to = $user['email'];
        $this->Email->subject = 'Test email';
        $this->Email->template = 'update';
        $this->Email->sendAs = 'both'; // both = html and text

        $this->set('user', $user);
        $this->set('about', $about_id);

        $this->Email->send();
        $this->Email->reset();
    }
}

Any ideas as to why the emails show in debug mode but won’t actually send?

Answer 1

I think the reason why my emails were not sending was because there was no mail server configured on the web server my CakePHP was running on so there was no way to route the emails. However, this meant they would show up in the debug because they were generated successfully, just not sent.

In the end, I ended up using my company’s Exchange mail server using the SMTP settings.

Code to use SMTP to send CakePHP emails

$this->Email->smtpOptions = array(        
    'port'=>'25',         
    'timeout'=>'30',        
    'host' => '192.168.0.244',       
);

// Other email code here, e.g. from and to etc...

$this->Email->delivery = 'smtp';