How to Send an Email

Configuration

To use Swift Mailer, you'll need to configure it for your mail server.

In a standard Symfony installation, some swiftmailer configuration is already included:

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# app/config/config.yml
swiftmailer:
    transport: '%mailer_transport%'
    host:      '%mailer_host%'
    username:  '%mailer_user%'
    password:  '%mailer_password%'

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<!-- app/config/config.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:swiftmailer="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/swiftmailer"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/swiftmailer http://symfony.com/schema/dic/swiftmailer/swiftmailer-1.0.xsd">

    <swiftmailer:config
        transport="%mailer_transport%"
        host="%mailer_host%"
        username="%mailer_user%"
        password="%mailer_password%"
    />
</container>

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// app/config/config.php
$container->loadFromExtension('swiftmailer', array(
    'transport'  => "%mailer_transport%",
    'host'       => "%mailer_host%",
    'username'   => "%mailer_user%",
    'password'   => "%mailer_password%",
));

These values (e.g. %mailer_transport%), are reading from the parameters that are set in the parameters.yml file. You can modify the values in that file, or set the values directly here.

The following configuration attributes are available:

• transport (smtp, mail, sendmail, or gmail)
• username
• password
• host
• port
• encryption (tls, or ssl)
• auth_mode (plain, login, or cram-md5)

• spool

  • type (how to queue the messages, file or memory is supported, see How to Spool Emails)
  • path (where to store the messages)
• delivery_addresses (an array of email addresses where to send ALL emails)
• disable_delivery (set to true to disable delivery completely)

Sending Emails

The Swift Mailer library works by creating, configuring and then sending Swift_Message objects. The "mailer" is responsible for the actual delivery of the message and is accessible via the mailer service. Overall, sending an email is pretty straightforward:

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public function indexAction($name)
{
    $message = (new \Swift_Message('Hello Email'))
        ->setFrom('send@example.com')
        ->setTo('recipient@example.com')
        ->setBody(
            $this->renderView(
                // app/Resources/views/Emails/registration.html.twig
                'Emails/registration.html.twig',
                array('name' => $name)
            ),
            'text/html'
        )
        /*
         * If you also want to include a plaintext version of the message
        ->addPart(
            $this->renderView(
                'Emails/registration.txt.twig',
                array('name' => $name)
            ),
            'text/plain'
        )
        */
    ;

    $this->get('mailer')->send($message);

    return $this->render(...);
}

To keep things decoupled, the email body has been stored in a template and rendered with the renderView() method. The registration.html.twig template might look something like this:

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{# app/Resources/views/Emails/registration.html.twig #}
<h3>You did it! You registered!</h3>

Hi {{ name }}! You're successfully registered.

{# example, assuming you have a route named "login" #}
To login, go to: <a href="{{ url('login') }}">...</a>.

Thanks!

{# Makes an absolute URL to the /images/logo.png file #}
<img src="{{ absolute_url(asset('images/logo.png')) }}">

The $message object supports many more options, such as including attachments, adding HTML content, and much more. Fortunately, Swift Mailer covers the topic of Creating Messages in great detail in its documentation.

Learn more