Setting up SMTP mailing with PHP 7.2 in 2020 - PHP Mailing in 2020

Question

I want to know how I can set up automatic SMTP mailing system in php 7.2 in 2020. I know about mail() function but that comes after the initial set up.

I have seen the other questions on stackoverflow about it, but I am posting this question bc I only found only outdated questions from like 2011 or 2012 and PHP has changed a lot from that time from security aspect and other aspects.

Here is what I tried:

From what I found I should be changing ini_set() in php.ini file but there are none of ini_set() functions there. What I did is I changed smtp to smtp=my-mail-server-of-choice-here and smtp_port to smtp_port=587 like I was told to.

Also, I should be updating sendmail.ini in sendmail folder but (guess what) sendmail folder doesn't exist -> that also means sendmail.exe and sendmail.ini also don't exist

I am also getting this error mail(): SMTP server response: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first

This is the file:

$to = 'my-users-mail@some-random.mail';
$subject = "HTML email";

$message = "Hi Bob!";

$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0"."\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=UTF-8"."\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: my-mail@gmail.com'."\r\n";

mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

which (from what I read) should be fixable from ini_set() which doesn't exist anywhere in php.ini file - I guess that bc only outdated solutions are available

What is the modern standard, php 7.2, way of doing this that's actually going to work and be safe?

BTW I am using XAMPP v3.2.4 (I will be moving to WAMPP in production) on localhost and I am using gmail as my mail service

Answer 1

You have a bad idea of "modern" thinking. The new way of doing things is actually using extensions, frameworks etc etc... - reusable code is the word in this fast expanding it world

Back in like '90s or '80s people didn't have the internet so widely available or available at all and if you wanted to (lets say) make connection between two computers (think NASA or something) you would have to write your own protocols (POP or IMAP) from scratch and spend weeks or even months in programming.

Now its 2020. and we have a lot of reusable code widely available, repositories, open-source software etc... you get the picture

Sure you can write you own authentication in php in like a week or you can simply download

Net_Socket (i have 1.2.2) -> https://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket/download/ Net_SMTP (i have 1.9.2) -> https://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP/download/ Mail_extension (I have version 1.4.1) -> https://pear.php.net/package/Mail/download/

extract everything with 7-zip and structure it like this

your main folder

.Mail-1.4.1
    >Mail.php
    >Mail
        > some default files(dont touch these)
        > Net(here you paste files from Net_SMTP and Net_Socket - they should be named SMTP.php and Socket.php)

. sendmail.php

In sendmail.php you write this:

//Make sure you made your folder/file structure like you should
require_once "./Mail-1.4.1/Mail.php";

$host = "your-mail-server-of-choice-here";
$port = "465";
$username = "your mail or username";
$password = "your password";

//setting up smtp connection
$smtp = Mail::factory(
    'smtp',
    array (
        'host' => $host,
        'port' => $port,
        //you don't need this if u are using mail server that doesn't need authentication
        'auth' => true,
        'username' => $username,
        'password' => $password
    )
);

$from = "your-mail-here";
$to = "recepient-mail-here";
$subject = "Ay bro!";
$body = "Your message here!";

$headers = array (
    'From' => $from,
    'To' => $to,
    'Subject' => $subject
);

$mail = $smtp->send($to, $headers, $body);
if (PEAR::isError($mail)) {
    exit( "Error happened :( -->".$mail->getMessage() );
}

That was easy right? If we went your way, you would spend a lot of time and tears(yes tears) on making all of these connections and stuff and make it safe etc etc. I hope you are happy with this results!