Send email using Gmail and PHPMailer

Argel Arias — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:59:20 +0000

The new automatic update generator is ready, it has been a long time since OCRALight has been finished and little bit of this and that has been polished on the update generation.

The process is fairly complex, it involves reverse-engineering, data-mining, packaging, distribution and a lot o fighting with our crappy Windows server that is between me and the final Linux liberation.

Every step in the road has been automatized, one by one, every problem has been solved and polished, now the final piece is in his place, the automatic email generation. Now the updates will be made and send everyday, even weekends and vacations.

If you are interested in the technical aspect keep reading:

How it has been done:

First of all, you need to have PHP with OpenSSL support, for Windows you’ll need to Install PHP and carefully select OpenSSL in the components list, if you already have PHP installed, don’t worry a re-install will keep your configuration, and you’ll be able to select OpenSSL.

Then download PHPMailer,  and extract it near your main php file.

You will need to have a Gmail account(obviously) I recommend you to make a new one just for this, mainly because the configuration need to be very precise, and you wouldn’t be able to use it freely without loosing functionality or risking to break the configuration.

Configure your Gmail account to use POP mail, but not IMAP, ONLY POP, just POP.

And now the code:

require(”PHPMailer/class.phpmailer.php”);
$update_emails = array(

    ‘Juan Perez’ => ‘Juan_Perez@jalisco.gob.mx’,

    ‘Francisco Garcia’ => ‘fgarcia@hotmail.com’,

    ‘Diana la del Tunel’ => ‘diana@gmail.com’

  );
echo “\nSending Update Email\n”;
$mail = new PHPMailer();  // Instantiate your new class

$mail->IsSMTP();          // set mailer to use SMTP

$mail->SMTPAuth = true;   // turn on SMTP authentication

$mail->Host = “smtp.gmail.com”; // specify main and backup server

$mail->SMTPSecure= ’ssl’; //  Used instead of TLS when only POP mail is selected

$mail->Port = 465;        //  Used instead of 587 when only POP mail is selected
$mail->Username = “youremail@gmail.com”;  // SMTP username, you could use your google apps address too.

$mail->Password = “yaourextremelynotlamepassword”; // SMTP password
$mail->From = “youremail@gmail.com”; //Aparently must be the same as the UserName

$mail->FromName = “Your name”;

$mail->Subject = ‘The subject’;

$mail->Body = “The body of your message”;
foreach ($update_emails as $name => $email) {

  $mail->AddBcc($email, $name);

}
if(!$mail->Send())

{

  echo “There was an error sending the message:” . $mail->ErrorInfo;

  exit;

}

echo “Done…\n”;

?>

In this code I send the email to a group of people, thus I use the “Bcc:” field instead of the “To:” one, to add a “To:” you would use AddAddress($email, $name).

A possible upgrade would be to use a MySQL database to store the addresses,  and provide a web interface to add and remove them. for the moment, this is enough.

Soo remember:

PHP with OpenSSL
PHPMailer
Create a Gmail Account
Activate POP
Host: smtp.gmail.com
SMTPAuth=true
SMTPSEcure=ssl
Port: 465
User with Domain
Password
$Mail->send()

Radio Levhita » gmail

Send email using Gmail and PHPMailer