How do I use the CakePHP Email Component?

Question

I am new to CakePHP and trying desperately to learn! My most recent struggle is with the Email Component. I have a contract. When I create the contract, I add a user. When I save the new contract...for the first time, I want to send an email to the user in that contract that allows them to click on a link back to the contract, and then accept or reject the contract. How do I send this email? The more details I can get, answer-wise, the better. Everything I have read out there is surprisingly confusing. Do I need to configure smtp settings? How do I grab the user in the contract after it has been saved and pass it and the link to the contract on to the email? How do I know if the email has been sent, without going and checking my email every single time? Here is the code I have in my contracts_controller.php for the email sending function: (A Contract belongsTo a User, and a User hasMany Contracts.) ``` function _sendContractEmail($id) { $this->Email->smtpOptions = array( 'port'=>'465'…

Accepted Answer

http://book.cakephp.org/view/481/Sending-A-Message-Using-SMTP

Use the code sample from the page, specifically the last section to get error notices

```
/* Check for SMTP errors. */
    $this->set('smtp-errors', $this->Email->smtpError);
```

You can print the smtp errors using pr(smtp-errors) your view.

The layouts for emails should be located under

```
/app/view/layout/email/html
/app/view/layout/email/text
```

If you want copy and modify default templates they can be found under

```
/libs/view/layouts/email/html
/libs/view/layouts/email/text
```

Your code looks correct. The problem is probably with the SMTP server rejecting the email.

Oh and you should also check you debug.log and error.log under /app/tmp/logs

How do I use the CakePHP Email Component?

Solution

Problem