Send Email Function

Question

I have a user controller that I use for my front-end of my Codeigniter application that handles the registration, login, forgot-password, view (profiles) pages and I am trying to decide on where the best place is for a function to go for a send email function. If something is best suited for a library function or if it should be placed elsewhere.

I ask this because I am really trying to focus on the Single Responsibility Principle and Polymorphism inside of OOP.

Can someone maybe give some of their best advice and/or suggestions on how I could come to a good place?

Answer 1

You can write common code for sending email in your own helper (called "general_helper.php") in application/helpers.

Then add "general_helper" in config/autoload.php. So, this helper file will available in all places. Helper may/may not have class. So if you did not use class in helper, you can call the sendmail function directly as

sendmail($to,$from,$sub,$msg,$headers);

Answer 2

codeigniter has a native helper in system/helper/email_helper that provides a function called send_email() that uses php mail() function. While that is pretty basic it gives you an idea how to setup things.

What i suggest is create a helper to overwrite the native. i.e create a MY_email_helper.php in application/helpers and within define your own send_email() function

/**
 * Send an email
 *
 * @access  public
 * @return  bool
 */
if ( ! function_exists('send_email'))
{
    function send_email($recipient, $subject, $message, $from_email = NULL, $from_name = NULL, $method = NULL)
    {
        // Obtain a reference to the ci super object
        $CI =& get_instance();

        switch(strtolower($method))
        {
            /*
             * SES Free Tier allows 2000 emails per day (Up to 10,000 per day)
             * see: http://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/
             */
            case 'ses':
                $CI->load->library('aws_lib');
                $sender = $from_email ? ($from_name ? $from_name.' <'.$from_email.'>' : $from_email) : NULL;
                $CI->aws_lib->send_email($recipient, '=?UTF-8?B?'.base64_encode($subject).'?=', $message, $sender);
            break;

            /*
             * Mandrill Free Tier allows 12,000 per month
             * see: http://mandrill.com/pricing/
             */
            case 'mandrill':
                // todo...
            break;

            default:
                $CI->load->library('email');
                $CI->email->from($from_email, $from_name);
                $CI->email->to($recipient);
                $CI->email->subject('=?UTF-8?B?'.base64_encode($subject).'?=');
                $CI->email->message($message);
                $CI->email->send();
                log_message('debug', $CI->email->print_debugger());
        }
    }
}

that means if you're already using send_mail() function just load the MY_email_helper and everything will work as per normal.