7.3 KiB
summary: Send HTML and plain text email from your SilverStripe application.
Creating and sending email in SilverStripe is done through the [api:Email] and [api:Mailer] classes. This document
covers how to create an Email instance, customise it with a HTML template, then send it through a custom Mailer.
Configuration
Out of the box, SilverStripe will use the built-in PHP mail() command. If you are not running an SMTP server, you
will need to either configure PHP's SMTP settings (see PHP documentation to include your mail
server configuration or use one of the third party SMTP services like SparkPost
and Postmark.
Usage
Sending plain text only
:::php
$email = new Email($from, $to, $subject, $body);
$email->sendPlain();
Sending combined HTML and plain text
By default, emails are sent in both HTML and Plaintext format. A plaintext representation is automatically generated
from the system by stripping HTML markup, or transforming it where possible (e.g. <strong>text</strong> is converted
to *text*).
:::php
$email = new Email($from, $to, $subject, $body);
$email->send();
Templates
HTML emails can use custom templates using the same template language as your website template. You can also pass the
email object additional information using the populateTemplate method.
mysite/templates/Email/MyCustomEmail.ss
:::ss
<h1>Hi $Member.FirstName</h1>
<p>You can go to $Link.</p>
The PHP Logic..
:::php
$email = new Email();
$email
->setFrom($from)
->setTo($to)
->setSubject($subject)
->setTemplate('MyCustomEmail')
->populateTemplate(new ArrayData(array(
'Member' => Member::currentUser(),
'Link' => $link
)));
$email->send();
Sub classing
To keep your application code clean and your internal API clear, a better approach to generating an email is to create
a new subclass of Email which takes the required dependencies and handles setting the properties itself.
mysite/code/MyCustomEmail.php
:::php
<?php
class MyEmail extends Email {
protected $ss_template = "MyEmail";
public function __construct($member) {
$from = 'no-reply@mysite.com';
$to = $member->Email;
$subject = "Welcome to our site.";
$link = Director::absoluteBaseUrl();
parent::__construct($from, $to, $subject);
$this->populateTemplate(new ArrayData(array(
'Member' => $member->Email,
'Link' => $link
)));
}
}
Then within your application, usage of the email is much clearer to follow.
:::php
<?php
$member = Member::currentUser();
$email = new MyEmail($member);
$email->send();
Administrator Emails
You can set the default sender address of emails through the Email.admin_email configuration setting.
mysite/_config/app.yml
:::yaml
Email:
admin_email: support@silverstripe.org
Redirecting Emails
There are several other configuration settings to manipulate the email server.
Email.send_all_emails_towill redirect all emails sent to the given address. This is useful for testing and staging servers where you do not wish to send emails out.Email.cc_all_emails_toandEmail.bcc_all_emails_towill add an additional recipient in the BCC / CC header. These are good for monitoring system-generated correspondence on the live systems.
Configuration of those properties looks like the following:
mysite/_config.php
:::php
if(Director::isLive()) {
Config::inst()->update('Email', 'bcc_all_emails_to', "client@example.com");
} else {
Config::inst()->update('Email', 'send_all_emails_to', "developer@example.com");
}
Setting custom "Reply To" email address.
For email messages that should have an email address which is replied to that actually differs from the original "from" email, do the following. This is encouraged especially when the domain responsible for sending the message isn't necessarily the same which should be used for return correspondence and should help prevent your message from being marked as spam.
:::php
$email = new Email(..);
$email->setReplyTo('me@address.com');
Setting Custom Headers
For email headers which do not have getters or setters (like setTo(), setFrom()) you can use addCustomHeader($header, $value)
:::php
$email = new Email(...);
$email->addCustomHeader('HeaderName', 'HeaderValue');
..
Newsletters
The newsletter module provides a UI and logic to send batch emails.
Custom Mailers
SilverStripe supports changing out the underlying web server SMTP mailer service through the Email::set_mailer()
function. A Mailer subclass will commonly override the sendPlain and sendHTML methods to send emails through curl
or some other process that isn't the built in mail() command.
In this example, LocalMailer will take any email's going while the site is in Development mode and save it to the
assets folder instead.
mysite/code/LocalMailer.php
:::php
<?php
class LocalMailer extends Mailer {
function sendHTML($to, $from, $subject, $htmlContent, $attachedFiles = false, $customheaders = false, $plainContent = false, $inlineImages = false) {
$file = ASSETS_PATH . '/_mail_'. urlencode(sprintf("%s_%s", $subject, $to));
file_put_contents($file, $htmlContent);
}
function sendPlain($to, $from, $subject, $htmlContent, $attachedFiles = false, $customheaders = false, $plainContent = false, $inlineImages = false) {
$file = ASSETS_PATH . '/_mail_'. urlencode(sprintf("%s_%s", $subject, $to));
file_put_contents($file, $htmlContent);
}
}
mysite/_config.php
:::php
if(Director::isLive()) {
Email::set_mailer(new PostmarkMailer());
} else {
Email::set_mailer(new LocalMailer());
}
Setting bounce handler
A bounce handler email can be specified one of a few ways:
- Via config by setting the
Mailer.default_bounce_emailconfig to the desired email address. - Via _ss_environment.php by setting the
BOUNCE_EMAILdefinition. - Via PHP by calling
Email::mailer()->setBounceEmail('bounce@mycompany.com');
API Documentation
- [api:Email]