Introduction to Zend\Mail

Getting started

Zend\Mail provides generalized functionality to compose and send both text and MIME-compliant multipart email messages. Mail can be sent with Zend\Mail via the Mail\Transport\Sendmail, Mail\Transport\Smtp or the Mail\Transport\File transport. Of course, you can also implement your own transport by implementing the Mail\Transport\TransportInterface.

Simple email with ZendMail

A simple email consists of one or more recipients, a subject, a body and a sender. To send such a mail using Zend\Mail\Transport\Sendmail, do the following:

use Zend\Mail;

$mail = new Mail\Message();
$mail->setBody('This is the text of the email.');
$mail->setFrom('Freeaqingme@example.org', 'Sender\'s name');
$mail->addTo('Matthew@example.com', 'Name of recipient');
$mail->setSubject('TestSubject');

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

Note

Minimum definitions

In order to send an email using Zend\Mail you have to specify at least one recipient as well as a message body. Please note that each Transport may require additional parameters to be set.

For most mail attributes there are “get” methods to read the information stored in the message object. for further details, please refer to the API documentation.

You also can use most methods of the Mail\Message object with a convenient fluent interface.

use Zend\Mail;

$mail = new Mail\Message();
$mail->setBody('This is the text of the mail.')
     ->setFrom('somebody@example.com', 'Some Sender')
     ->addTo('somebody_else@example.com', 'Some Recipient')
     ->setSubject('TestSubject');

Configuring the default sendmail transport

The most simple to use transport is the Mail\Transport\Sendmail transport class. It is essentially a wrapper to the PHP mail() function. If you wish to pass additional parameters to the mail() function, simply create a new transport instance and pass your parameters to the constructor.

Passing additional parameters to the Zend\Mail\Transport\Sendmail transport.

This example shows how to change the Return-Path of the mail() function.

use Zend\Mail;

$mail = new Mail\Message();
$mail->setBody('This is the text of the email.');
$mail->setFrom('Freeaqingme@example.org', 'Dolf');
$mail->addTo('matthew@example.com', 'Matthew');
$mail->setSubject('TestSubject');

$transport = new Mail\Transport\Sendmail('-freturn_to_me@example.com');
$transport->send($mail);

Note

Safe mode restrictions

Supplying additional parameters to the transport will cause the mail() function to fail if PHP is running in safe mode.

Note

Choosing your transport wisely

Although the sendmail transport is the transport that requires only minimal configuration, it may not be suitable for your production environment. This is because emails sent using the sendmail transport will be more often delivered to SPAM-boxes. This can partly be remedied by using the SMTP Transport combined with an SMTP server that has an overall good reputation. Additionally, techniques such as SPF and DKIM may be employed to ensure even more email messages are delivered as should.

Warning

Sendmail Transport and Windows

As the PHP manual states the mail() function has different behaviour on Windows and on *nix based systems. Using the Sendmail Transport on Windows will not work in combination with addBcc(). The mail() function will sent to the BCC recipient such that all the other recipients can see him as recipient!

Therefore if you want to use BCC on a windows server, use the SMTP transport for sending!