PHPMailer does not provide ErrorInfo - error-handling

Question

I have a problem with PHP Mailer, which is not providing the $mail->ErrorInfo when an error occured.
I tested with the original example from [http://phpmailer.worxware.com/?pg=tutorial#1] as below.
<?php
require("class.phpmailer.php");
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP
$mail->Host = "smtp.example.com"; // SMTP server
$mail->From = "from#example.com";
$mail->Subject = "First PHPMailer Message";
$mail->Body = "Hi! \n\n This is my first e-mail sent through PHPMailer.";
$mail->WordWrap = 50;
if(!$mail->Send()) {
echo 'Message was not sent.';
echo 'Mailer error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
echo 'Message has been sent.';
}
?>
I've set the host to my server, modified "from" and "AddAddress" to correct addresses and I've received the test mail as expected. But whhen I change the recipient address to blxxxa#blablaxxxx.de, just to check how the errors will be handled I don't get the error.
$mail->AddAddress("blxxxa#blablaxxxx.de");
I still receive "Message has been sent". Any Idea? Maybe server settings?

Answer 1

Try putting your $mail->Send() into a try-catch block.
try{
// ... Your Setup ...
$mail->Send();
}
catch (phpmailerException $e) {
echo $e->errorMessage(); //PHPMailer error messages
}
catch (Exception $e) {
echo $e->getMessage(); // other error messages
}
if you look at the code of the phpmailer library ( phpmailer library on github search for the public function send() code block )
you'll see that phpmailer throws exceptions in case of failure.
You have some good examples here : http://www.merocode.com/sending-emails-using-phpmailer-via-smtp/
good luck.

Answer 2

ErrorInfo will not contain an error message unless an error happens. It sounds like your mail server is accepting the message without complaining (as would be expected if it's a relay or on localhost), so you need to check your mail server logs and your bounce mailbox since the problem is further upstream from you and thus not visible to PHPMailer.
In short, you're not doing anything wrong, you're just looking in the wrong place.

Answer 3

Provide profer hostname, username and password. for example,
<?php
require("class.phpmailer.php");
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP
$mail->Host = "mail.example.com"; // SMTP server
$mail->Port = 25; // set the SMTP port for the GMAIL server
$mail->Username = "username"; // SMTP account username example
$mail->Password = "password";
$mail->From = "from#example.com";
$mail->Subject = "First PHPMailer Message";
$mail->Body = "Hi! \n\n This is my first e-mail sent through PHPMailer.";
$mail->WordWrap = 50;
if(!$mail->Send()) {
echo 'Message was not sent.';
echo 'Mailer error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
echo 'Message has been sent.';
}
?>

Answer 4

In my case PhpMailer causes a warning at $mail->send();
Warning: stream_socket_enable_crypto(): Peer certificate CN=mail.xxx.com' did not match expected CN=mail.yyy.com'
in class.smtp.php on line 368
So imho PhpMailer misses some exception handing here.
In such a case you have the following possibilities:
Create an issue in the ticket system https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/issues and hope for an update
add a "#" to the function call #$mail->send(); - which hides the warning, but does not help you further
Work with the PHP buffer to read out the warning.
Update:
In PHPMailer 6.x the warning was removed - but $mail->ErrorInfo does not contain any useful information. All I get is "SMTP connect() failed". Not really an improvement...