CodeIgniter unable to send email using PHP mail() - email

Question

I'm trying to send an e-mail with Codeigniter like this:
$this->load->library('email');
$this->email->from("myemail#email.com");
$this->email->reply_to("myemail#email.com");
$this->email->to("myemail#email.com");
$this->email->subject("Test mail");
$this->email->message("Email body");
$this->email->set_alt_message("Email body txt");
$this->email->send();
and I got this on the email debugger: Unable to send email using PHP mail(). Your server might not be configured to send mail using this method.
If I do e simple PHP mail() function with the same addresses, it works but when I use CodeIgniter it gives me the error. So why would it work with simple mail() but not with CodeIgniter ? Any ideas ?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Had similar issue.
That's working code from the controller :
$config = array();
$config['useragent'] = "CodeIgniter";
$config['mailpath'] = "/usr/bin/sendmail"; // or "/usr/sbin/sendmail"
$config['protocol'] = "smtp";
$config['smtp_host'] = "localhost";
$config['smtp_port'] = "25";
$config['mailtype'] = 'html';
$config['charset'] = 'utf-8';
$config['newline'] = "\r\n";
$config['wordwrap'] = TRUE;
$this->load->library('email');
$this->email->initialize($config);
$this->email->from($fromEmail, $fromName);
$this->email->to($email);
$this->email->subject('Тест Email');
$this->email->message($this->load->view('email/'.$type.'-html', $data, TRUE));
$this->email->send();

Answer 2

Clearly, there does not seem to be a definitive 'one size fits all' answer. What worked for me was changing
$config['protocol'] = 'smtp';
TO:
$config['protocol'] = 'mail';
Hope this helps...

Answer 3

Do you have an email.php file in your config folder? Maybe there's a problem with your configuration in there.

Answer 4

Nobody seemed to really find a definitive answer, so I did some digging around and found out why.
in system/libraries/Email.php, first look at line 1552:
if ( ! mail($this->_recipients, $this->_subject, $this->_finalbody, $this->_header_str, "-f ".$this->clean_email($this->_headers['From'])))
it seems to send everything all peachy like. I had the exact same symptoms too. To see if I was crazy, i inserted immediately before...
mail($this->_recipients, $this->_subject, $this->_finalbody)
so I basically removed all the headers and let PHP put in the defaults. Bingo! Without CI's headers, it works. With the CI headers, it doesn't. So what is it?
Digging around some more, I looked up to where html is initialized and used. Turns out it doesn't really do anything until around 1046, where it builds the message body.
from line 1048:
if ($this->send_multipart === FALSE)
{
$hdr .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=" . $this->charset . $this->newline;
$hdr .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable";
}
else
{
$hdr .= "Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"" . $this->_alt_boundary . "\"" . $this->newline . $this->newline;
$body .= $this->_get_mime_message() . $this->newline . $this->newline;
$body .= "--" . $this->_alt_boundary . $this->newline;
$body .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=" . $this->charset . $this->newline;
$body .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: " . $this->_get_encoding() . $this->newline . $this->newline;
$body .= $this->_get_alt_message() . $this->newline . $this->newline . "--" . $this->_alt_boundary . $this->newline;
$body .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=" . $this->charset . $this->newline;
$body .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable" . $this->newline . $this->newline;
}
Flipping send_multipart between TRUE and FALSE will make the mail class work or not work.
Looked through the Code Ignitor's email class docs reveals nothing. Going to line 52:
var $send_multipart = TRUE; // TRUE/FALSE - Yahoo does not like multipart alternative, so this is an override. Set to FALSE for Yahoo.
So there you have it. Possibly an error in how CI does multipart messages? The hidden config preference
$config['send_multipart'] = FALSE;
in the email.php seems to do the trick.

Answer 5

Be sure domain name in
$this->email->from("myemail#**email.com**");
match to server domain name

Answer 6

Add a protocol variable to the config array and assign it the value "sendmail". The email.php file in the config folder should read as shown below. Mine works like this:
$config['protocol'] = 'sendmail';
$config['mailtype'] = 'html';
$config['charset'] = 'utf-8';
$config['newline'] = "\r\n";

Answer 7

Ensure that Apache can send emails.
To check your current sendmail status:
sestatus -b | grep httpd_can_sendmail
Change it to this if it is off:
sudo setsebool -P httpd_can_sendmail on

Answer 8

I read a comment in the file email.php :
// most documentation of sendmail using the "-f" flag lacks a space after it, however
// we've encountered servers that seem to require it to be in place.
return mail($this->_recipients, $this->_subject, $this->_finalbody, $this->_header_str, '-f '.$this->clean_email($this->_headers['Return-Path']));
"-f" flag - this problem!!!

Answer 9

Had the same problem,
Make sure your 'from' address is a valid email address.

Answer 10

I had the same problem and though it seems silly to me now, I had some of the config array options capitalized when they all need to be lowercase:
was:
$mail_config['smtp_host'] = 'mail.example.com';
$mail_config['smtp_port'] = '587';
$mail_config['smtp_user'] = 'email#example.com';
$mail_config['smtp_pass'] = 'password';
$mail_config['smtp_crypto'] = 'TLS'; //ERROR
$mail_config['protocol'] = 'SMTP'; //ERROR
$mail_config['mailtype'] = 'HTML'; //ERROR
$mail_config['send_multipart'] = FALSE;
$this->email->initialize($mail_config);
Fixed:
$mail_config['smtp_host'] = 'mail.example.com';
$mail_config['smtp_port'] = '587';
$mail_config['smtp_user'] = 'email#example.com';
$mail_config['smtp_pass'] = 'password';
$mail_config['smtp_crypto'] = 'tls'; //FIXED
$mail_config['protocol'] = 'smtp'; //FIXED
$mail_config['mailtype'] = 'html'; //FIXED
$mail_config['send_multipart'] = FALSE;
$this->email->initialize($mail_config);
That worked for me

Answer 11

Its worth saying that if you're on WAMP (Windows) you will need to have sendmail installed otherwise there is no default SMTP method of sending. I wanted to use Gmail but couldn't because there is simply no default mail mechanism.

Answer 12

$config = Array(
'protocol' => 'smtp',
'smtp_host' => 'ssl://smtp.googlemail.com',
'smtp_port' => 465,
'smtp_user' => 'email',
'smtp_pass' => 'pass',
'mailtype' => 'html',
'charset' => 'iso-8859-1'
);
$this->load->library('email',$config);
**$this->email->set_newline("\r\n");** <- add this line
this code worked for me.