How to integrate PHPMailer with Codeigniter 3

here is a guide

1. installing PHP Mailer

Download the latest PHPMailer Build from Github. You can find the project here

Click now on "clone or download" and download it as zip - as in the image below is shown.

The folder in the zip is called PHPMailer-master. Unzip this in your application/third_party/ folder and rename the folder to phpmailer. You should see something like this

2. PHP Mailer Library

Imho its best to create a library which handles your PHPMailer Object (Phpmailer_library.php) This library could look like

class Phpmailer_library
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        log_message('Debug', 'PHPMailer class is loaded.');
    }

    public function load()
    {
        require_once(APPPATH."third_party/phpmailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php");
        $objMail = new PHPMailer;
        return $objMail;
    }
}

3. Using this library in one of your controllers, models etc.

class Welcome extends CI_Controller {


    public function index()
    {
        $this->load->library("phpmailer_library");
        $objMail = $this->phpmailer_library->load();
    }
}

i think this should pretty much do the job. If you've any troubles, don't hesitate to ask ;)

---

Update 25.06.2018

Since the PHPMailer guys removed the autoloader you've two options now:

1.) via Composer

for those who didn't know - Codeigniter supports Composer - you simply have to activate the autoload - you can find this in your config.php

$config['composer_autoload'] = true;

For more informations take a look here

After that - run composer like

composer require phpmailer/phpmailer

You now should have within your application/vendor folder the phpmailer files.

The library should look like

class Phpmailer_library
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        log_message('Debug', 'PHPMailer class is loaded.');
    }

    public function load()
    {
        $objMail = new PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer();
        return $objMail;
    }
}

2.) download

follow step 1

The library should look like

class Phpmailer_library
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        log_message('Debug', 'PHPMailer class is loaded.');
    }

    public function load()
    {
        require_once(APPPATH.'third_party/phpmailer/src/PHPMailer.php');
        require_once(APPPATH.'third_party/phpmailer/src/SMTP.php');

        $objMail = new PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer();
        return $objMail;
    }
}

and everything else should remain the same

**

UPDATE AUGUST 2019

**

At first, download the latest PHPMailer library files and place all the files in the application/third_party/ folder of your CodeIgniter application.

Now, create a library (application/libraries/Phpmailer_lib.php) to handle the PHPMailer object.

• Include the PHPMailer library files.
• Initialize the PHPMailer class.

• Return the PHPMailer object.

  use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
  use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
  class PHPMailer_Lib
  {
  public function __construct(){
      log_message('Debug', 'PHPMailer class is loaded.');
  }
  
  public function load(){
      // Include PHPMailer library files
      require_once APPPATH.'third_party/phpmailer/Exception.php';
      require_once APPPATH.'third_party/phpmailer/PHPMailer.php';
      require_once APPPATH.'third_party/phpmailer/SMTP.php';
  
      $mail = new PHPMailer(true);
      return $mail;
  }
  }
  

Now send email via SMTP server using PHPMailer from your controller using this code.

class Email extends CI_Controller{

    function  __construct(){
        parent::__construct();
    }

    function send(){
        // Load PHPMailer library
        $this->load->library('phpmailer_lib');

        // PHPMailer object
        $mail = $this->phpmailer_lib->load();

        // SMTP configuration
        $mail->isSMTP();
        $mail->Host     = 'smtp.example.com';
        $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
        $mail->Username = '[email protected]';
        $mail->Password = '********';
        $mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl';
        $mail->Port     = 465;

        $mail->setFrom('[email protected]', 'CodexWorld');
        $mail->addReplyTo('[email protected]', 'CodexWorld');

        // Add a recipient
        $mail->addAddress('[email protected]');

        // Add cc or bcc 
        $mail->addCC('[email protected]');
        $mail->addBCC('[email protected]');

        // Email subject
        $mail->Subject = 'Send Email via SMTP using PHPMailer in CodeIgniter';

        // Set email format to HTML
        $mail->isHTML(true);

        // Email body content
        $mailContent = "<h1>Send HTML Email using SMTP in CodeIgniter</h1>
            <p>This is a test email sending using SMTP mail server with PHPMailer.</p>";
        $mail->Body = $mailContent;

        // Send email
        if(!$mail->send()){
            echo 'Message could not be sent.';
            echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
        }else{
            echo 'Message has been sent';
        }
    }

}