PHP mailer

Introduction

Emails have always been an integral part of web applications, be it for account verification, password reset, or sending newsletters. While PHP offers a simple mail() function to send emails, it often falls short when you need advanced features, like sending attachments or using SMTP for better deliverability. That's where PHP Mailer comes in, a robust library designed to handle all your email-related needs in PHP. 

In this guide, we'll explore PHP Mailer, its features, and how to integrate it into your projects.

What is PHP Mailer?

PHP Mailer is an open-source library that allows you to send emails safely and easily via PHP code. Unlike PHP's built-in mail() function, PHP Mailer offers a wide range of features, including SMTP support, sending attachments, and even HTML-based emails.

Key Features of PHP Mailer

SMTP Support: One of the biggest advantages is the ability to use Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which significantly improves email deliverability.

Attachment Support: Need to send a PDF invoice or an image? PHP Mailer has you covered.

HTML Emails: Plain text emails are a thing of the past. With PHP Mailer, you can design rich HTML-based emails.

Setting up PHP Mailer

Before diving into sending emails, you'll need to install PHP Mailer. It can be easily installed via Composer, PHP's package manager.

composer require phpmailer/phpmailer

Alternatively, you can download it from GitHub and include it manually in your project.

Sending Your First Email

Once installed, you can send your first email in a few lines of code.

<?php
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;


$mail = new PHPMailer(true);
$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.example.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'your_email@example.com';
$mail->Password = 'your_password';
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';


$mail->setFrom('from@example.com', 'Mailer');
$mail->addAddress('to@example.com');


$mail->isHTML(true);
$mail->Subject = 'Here is the subject';
$mail->Body    = 'This is the HTML message body';


$mail->send();
?>

You can also try this code with Online PHP Compiler

Run Code

Adding Attachments and HTML Content

PHP Mailer makes it incredibly easy to send attachments and HTML content. Let's add an attachment and some HTML to our previous example.

$mail->addAttachment('/path/to/file.pdf');
$mail->Body = '<h1>Hi, this is your invoice</h1>';

You can also try this code with Online PHP Compiler

Run Code

Adding an attachment is as simple as specifying the file path. For HTML content, you just need to set the Body attribute and make sure isHTML() is set to true.