Zend Framework - Email Management

The Zend Framework provides a separate component called as zend-mail to send email messages. The zend-mail component also provides an option to read and write email messages with attachments both in text and html format. Sending an email in Zend is much easier and simple to configure.

Let us go through the email concepts, basic settings, advanced settings such as SMTP transport, etc., in this chapter.

Install Mail Component

The mail component can be installed using the following Composer command.

composer require zendframework/zend-mail

Basic Email Configuration

A basic email consists of one or more recipients, a subject, a body and a sender. Zend provides Zend\Mail\Message class to create a new email message. To send an email using the zend-mail, you must specify at least one recipient as well as a message body.

The partial code to create a new mail message is as follows −

use Zend\Mail;
$mail = new Mail\Message(); 
$mail->setSubject('Zend email sample'); 
$mail->setBody('This is content of the mail message'); 
$mail->setFrom('sender@example.com', "sender-name"); 
$mail->addTo('recipient@test.com', "recipient-name");

Zend provides Zend\Mail\Sendmail class to send the mail message. Sendmail uses the php native mail function, mail to send the mail message and we can configure the transport layer using php configuration file.

The partial coding using Sendmail is as follow −

$transport = new Mail\Transport\Sendmail(); 
$transport->send($mail);

The zend-mail provides many transport layer and each may require many additional parameters such as username, password, etc

Email Management Methods

Some of the notable email management methods are as follows −

  • isValid − Messages without a ‘From’ address is invalid.

isValid() : bool

  • setEncoding − Set the message encoding.

setEncoding(string $encoding) : void

  • getEncoding − Get the message encoding.

getEncoding() : string

  • setHeaders − Compose headers.

setHeaders(Zend\Mail\Headers $headers) : void

  • getHeaders − Access headers collection.

getHeaders() : Zend\Mail\Headers

  • setFrom − Set (overwrite) From addresses. It contains a key/value pairs where the key is the human readable name and the value is the email address.

setFrom( 
   string|AddressInterface|array|AddressList|Traversable $emailOrAddressList, 
      string|null $name 
) : void

  • addFrom − Add a ‘From’ address.

addFrom( 
   string|AddressInterface|array|AddressList|Traversable $emailOrAddressOrList, 
      string|null $name 
) : void

  • getFrom − Retrieve list of ‘From’ senders.

getFrom() : AddressList 
setTo - Overwrite the address list in the To recipients. 
setTo( 
   string|AddressInterface|array|AddressList|Traversable $emailOrAddressList, 
      null|string $name 
) : void

  • setSubject − Set the message subject header value.

setSubject(string $subject) :void

  • setBody − Set the message body.

setBody(null|string|Zend\Mime\Message|object $body) : void

SMTP Transport Layer

The zend-mail provides options to send an email using the SMTP server through the Zend\Mail\Transport\Smtpclass. It is like Sendmail except that it has a few additional options to configure the SMTP host, port, username, password, etc.

The partial code is as follows −

use Zend\Mail\Transport\Smtp as SmtpTransport; 
use Zend\Mail\Transport\SmtpOptions;  
$transport = new SmtpTransport(); 
$options = new SmtpOptions([ 
   'name' => 'localhost', 
   'host' =>'smtp.gmail.com', 
   'port' => 465, 
]); 
$transport->setOptions($options);

Here,

  • name − Name of the SMTP host.

  • host − Remote hostname or IP address.

  • port − Port on which the remote host is listening.

Mail Concept – Example

Let us follow the following points to write a simple php console application to understand the mail concept.

  • Create a folder “mailapp”.

  • Install zend-mail using the composer tool.

  • Create a php file Mail.php inside the “mailapp” folder.

  • Create the message using the Zend\Mail\Message.

$message = new Message(); 
$message->addTo('user1@gmail.com'); 
$message->addFrom('user2@gmail.com'); 
$message->setSubject('Hello!'); 
$message->setBody("My first Zend-mail application!");

  • Create the SMTP transport layer and add the necessary configuration.

// Setup SMTP transport using LOGIN authentication 
$transport = new SmtpTransport(); 
$options = new SmtpOptions([ 
   'name' => 'localhost', 
   'host' => 'smtp.gmail.com', // or any SMTP server 
   'port' => 465, // port on which the SMTP server is listening 
   'connection_class' => 'login', 
   'connection_config' => [ 
      username' => '<your username>', 'password' => '<your password>', 
      'ssl' => 'ssl'], 
]); 
$transport->setOptions($options);

  • Send the email using the send method.

$transport->send($message);

The complete listing, Mail.php is as follows −

<?php  
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';  

use Zend\Mail\Message; 
use Zend\Mail\Transport\Smtp as SmtpTransport; 
use Zend\Mail\Transport\SmtpOptions;  
  
$message = new Message(); 
$message->addTo('user1@gmail.com'); 
$message->addFrom('user2@gmail.com'); 
$message->setSubject('Hello!'); 
$message->setBody("My first Zend-mail application!");  
  
// Setup SMTP transport using LOGIN authentication 
$transport = new SmtpTransport(); 
$options = new SmtpOptions([ 
   'name' => 'localhost', 
   'host' => 'smtp.gmail.com', // or any SMTP server 
   'port' => 465, // port on which the SMTP server is listening 
   'connection_class' => 'login', 
   'connection_config' => [ 
      'username' => '<your username>', 'password' => '<your password>', 
      'ssl' => 'ssl'], 
]); 
$transport->setOptions($options); 
$transport->send($message);

Now, run the application in the command prompt php Mail.php. This will send the mail as configured in the application.

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