Sending email

A site sends emails: a registration confirmation, a notice about a comment. In CakePHP the Mailer class is responsible for this. The delivery method, called a transport, is set in the configuration, and the text of a message is written as a template, like a page.

Setup

The transport is described in the EmailTransport section. The mail server parameters go into config/app_local.php:

// config/app_local.php
'EmailTransport' => [
    'default' => [
        'className' => 'Smtp',
        'host' => 'smtp.example.com',
        'port' => 587,
        'username' => 'blog@example.com',
        'password' => 'secret',
        'tls' => true,
    ],
],

The default sender address is set by the Email section in config/app.php: the from key of the default profile.

A simple message

// src/Controller/ArticlesController.php
use Cake\Mailer\Mailer;
 
$mailer = new Mailer('default');
 
$mailer
    ->setTo('anna@example.com')
    ->setSubject('New article')
    ->deliver('A new article has been published in the blog.');

Mailer('default') takes the default profile from the configuration. deliver() sends a message with the given text. Put the code into the add() action after a successful save and the address receives an email.

Your own mailer class

Messages of one area are collected in a class in the src/Mailer folder:

bin/cake bake mailer User

// src/Mailer/UserMailer.php
namespace App\Mailer;
 
use App\Model\Entity\User;
use Cake\Mailer\Mailer;
 
class UserMailer extends Mailer
{
    public function welcome(User $user): void
    {
        $this
            ->setTo($user->email)
            ->setSubject('Welcome')
            ->setViewVars(['user' => $user]);
    }
}

Each method is one message. setViewVars() passes variables to the email template, like set() in a controller.

The email template

The template is named after the method. Create templates/email/text/welcome.php:

Hello!
 
You have registered in the blog with the address <?= $user->email ?>.

This is a plain text message, so it has no tags. For a message with markup create a second file, templates/email/html/welcome.php, and call setEmailFormat('both') in the method.

Sending

// src/Controller/UsersController.php
use Cake\Mailer\MailerAwareTrait;
 
class UsersController extends AppController
{
    use MailerAwareTrait;
 
    public function add()
    {
        // ... saving the user
 
        $this->getMailer('User')->send('welcome', [$user]);
    }
}

getMailer('User') creates UserMailer, and send() calls the welcome() method with the arguments from the array and sends the message. After registration the user receives a greeting.

Message methods

Common mistake

A developer's computer usually has no mail server, and sending ends with a connection error. For development set the transport to 'className' => 'Debug': the message goes nowhere and its content is returned by the send() method, an array with the headers and message keys that can be printed with debug().