The email plugin for Grav adds the ability to send email. This is particularly useful for the admin and login plugins.
The email plugin is easy to install with GPM.
$ bin/gpm install email
By default, the plugin uses PHP Mail as the mail engine.
enabled: true
from:
from_name:
to:
to_name:
queue:
enabled: true
flush_frequency: '* * * * *'
flush_msg_limit: 10
flush_time_limit: 100
mailer:
engine: sendmail
smtp:
server: localhost
port: 25
encryption: none
user: ''
password: ''
auth_mode: ''
sendmail:
bin: '/usr/sbin/sendmail -bs'
content_type: text/html
debug: false
You can configure the Email plugin by using the Admin plugin, navigating to the Plugins list and choosing Email.
That's the easiest route. Or you can also alter the Plugin configuration by copying the user/plugins/email/email.yaml file into user/config/plugins/email.yaml and make your modifications there.
The first setting you'd likely change is your Email from / Email to names and emails.
Also, you'd likely want to setup a SMTP server instead of using PHP Mail, as the latter is not 100% reliable and you might experience problems with emails.
Valid values for auth_mode include plain, login, cram-md5, or null.
NOTE:
engine: mailhas been deprecated from the SwiftMail library that this plugin uses as it does not funtion at all. Please usesmtpif at all possibe, andsendmailif SMTP is not an option.
A good way to test emails is to use a SMTP server service that's built for testing emails, for example https://mailtrap.io
Setup the Email plugin to use that SMTP server with the fake inbox data. For example enter this configuration in user/config/plugins/email.yaml or through the Admin panel:
mailer:
engine: smtp
smtp:
server: smtp.mailtrap.io
port: 2525
encryption: none
user: YOUR_MAILTRAP_INBOX_USER
password: YOUR_MAILTRAP_INBOX_PASSWORD
That service will intercept emails and show them on their web-based interface instead of sending them for real.
You can try and fine tune the emails there while testing.
A popular option for sending email is to simply use your Google Accounts SMTP server. To set this up you will need to do 2 things first:
- Enable IMAP in your Gmail
Settings->Forwarding and POP/IMAP->IMAP Access - Enable
Less secure appsin your user account settings - If you have 2-factor authentication, you will need to create a unique application password to use rather than your personal password
Then configure the Email plugin:
mailer:
engine: smtp
smtp:
server: smtp.gmail.com
port: 587
encryption: tls
user: 'YOUR_GOOGLE_EMAIL_ADDRESS'
password: 'YOUR_GOOGLE_PASSWORD'
NOTE: Check your email sending limits: https://support.google.com/a/answer/166852?hl=en
Generous email sending limits even in the free tier, and simple setup, make Sparkpost a great option for email sending. You just need to create an account, then setup a verified sending domain. Sparkpost does a nice job of making this process very easy and undertandable. Then just click on the SMTP Relay option to get your details for the configuration:
mailer:
engine: smtp
smtp:
server: smtp.sparkpostmail.com
port: 587
encryption: tls
user: 'SMTP_Injection'
password: 'SEND_EMAIL_API_KEY'
Then try sending a test email...
Sendgrid offers a very easy-to-setup serivce with 100 emails/day for free. The next level allows you to send 40k/email a day for just $10/month. Configuration is pretty simple, just create an account, then click SMTP integration and click the button to create an API key. The configuration is as follows:
mailer:
engine: smtp
smtp:
server: smtp.sendgrid.net
port: 587
encryption: tls
user: 'apikey'
password: 'YOUR_SENDGRID_API_KEY'
Mailgun is a great service that offers 10k/emails per month for free. Setup does require SPIF domain verification so that means you need to add at least a TXT entry in your DNS. This is pretty standard for SMTP sending services and does provide verification for remote email servers and makes your email sending more reliable. The Mailgun site, walks you through this process however, and the verification process is simple and fast.
mailer:
engine: smtp
smtp:
server: smtp.mailgun.org
port: 587
encryption: tls
user: 'MAILGUN_EMAIL_ADDRESS'
password: 'MAILGUN_EMAIL_PASSWORD'
Adjust these configurations for your account.
Mailjet is another great service that is easy to quickly setup and get started sending email. The free account gives you 200 emails/day or 600 emails/month. Just signup and setup your SPF and DKIM entries for your domain. Then click on the SMTP settings and use those to configure the email plugin:
mailer:
engine: smtp
smtp:
server: in-v3.mailjet.com
port: 587
encryption: tls
user: 'MAILJUST_USERNAME_API_KEY'
password: 'MAILJUST_PASSWORD_SECRET_KEY'
It's that easy!
ZOHO is a popular solution for hosted email due to it's great 'FREE' tier. It's paid options are also very reasonable and combined with the latest UI updates and outstanding security features, it's a solid email option.
In order to get ZOHO working with Grav, you need to send email via a user account. You can either use your users' password or generate an App Password via your ZOHO account (clicking on your avatar once logged in), then navigating to My Account -> Security -> App Passwords -> Generate. Just enter a unique app name (i.e. Grav Website).
NOTE: The SMTP host required can be found in Settings -> Mail - > Mail Accounts -> POP/IMAP -> SMTP. This will provide the SMTP server for this account (it may not be imap.zoho.com depending on what region you are in)
mailer:
engine: smtp
smtp:
server: smtp.zoho.com
port: 587
encryption: tls
user: 'ZOHO_EMAIL_ADDRESS'
password: 'ZOHO_EMAIL_PASSWORD'
Although not as reliable as SMTP not providing as much debug information, sendmail is a simple option as long as your hosting provider is not blocking the default SMTP port 25:
mailer:
engine: sendmail
sendmail:
bin: '/usr/sbin/sendmail -bs'
Simply adjust your binary command line to suite your environment
Solid SMTP options that even provide a FREE tier for low email volumes include:
- SendGrid (100/day free) - https://sendgrid.com
- Mailgun - (10k/month free) - https://www.mailgun.com
- Mailjet - (6k/month free) - https://www.mailjet.com/
- Sparkpost - (15k/month free) - https://www.sparkpost.com
- Amazon SES (62k/month free) - https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
If you are still unsure why should be using one in the first place, check out this article: https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/best-transactional-email-sending-services/
For performance reasons, it's often desirable to queue emails and send them in batches, rather than forcing Grav to wait while an email is sent. This is because email servers are sometimes slow and you might not want to wait for the whole email-sending process before continuing with Grav processing.
To address this, you can enable the Email Queue and this will ensure all email's in Grav are actually sent to the queue, and not sent directly. In order for the emails to be actually sent, you need to flush the queue. By default this is handled by the Grav Scheduler, so you need to ensure you have that enabled and setup correctly or your emails will not be sent!!!.
You can also manually flush the queue by using the provided CLI command:
$ bin/plugin email flush-queue
You can test your email configuration with the following CLI Command:
$ bin/plugin email test-email -t [email protected]
You can also pass in a configuration environment:
$ bin/plugin email test-email -t [email protected] -e mysite.com
This will use the email configuration you have located in user/mysite.com/config/plugins/email.yaml. Read the docs to find out more about environment-based configuration: https://learn.getgrav.org/advanced/environment-config
Add this code in your plugins:
$to = '[email protected]';
$from = '[email protected]';
$subject = 'Test';
$content = 'Test';
$message = $this->grav['Email']->message($subject, $content, 'text/html')
->setFrom($from)
->setTo($to);
$sent = $this->grav['Email']->send($message);When executing email actions during form processing, action parameters are inherited from the global configuration but may also be overridden on a per-action basis.
title: Custom form
form:
name: custom_form
fields:
# Any fields you'd like to add to the form:
# Their values may be referenced in email actions via '{{ form.value.FIELDNAME|e }}'
process:
email:
subject: "[Custom form] {{ form.value.name|e }}"
body: "{% include 'forms/data.txt.twig' %}"
from: [email protected]
from_name: 'Custom sender name'
to: [email protected]
to_name: 'Custom recipient name'
content_type: 'text/plain'
process_markdown: true
You can send multiple emails by creating an array of emails under the process: email: option in the form:
title: Custom form
form:
name: custom_form
fields:
# Any fields you'd like to add to the form:
# Their values may be referenced in email actions via '{{ form.value.FIELDNAME|e }}'
process:
email:
-
subject: "[Custom Email 1] {{ form.value.name|e }}"
body: "{% include 'forms/data.txt.twig' %}"
from: {mail: "[email protected]", name: "Site OWner"}
to: {mail: "[email protected]", name: "Recepient 1"}
template: "email/base.html.twig"
-
subject: "[Custom Email 2] {{ form.value.name|e }}"
body: "{% include 'forms/data.txt.twig' %}"
from: {mail: "[email protected]", name: "Site OWner"}
to: {mail: "[email protected]", name: "Recepient 1"}
template: "email/base.html.twig"
You can specify a Twig template for HTML rendering, else Grav will use the default one email/base.html.twig which is included in this plugin. You can also specify a custom template that extends the base, where you can customize the {% block content %} and {% block footer %}. For example:
{% extends 'email/base.html.twig' %}
{% block content %}
<p>
Greetings {{ form.value.name|e }},
</p>
<p>
We have received your request for help. Our team will get in touch with you within 3 Business Days.
</p>
<p>
Regards,
</p>
<p>
<b>My Company</b>
<br /><br />
E - <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a><br />
M - +1 555-123-4567<br />
W - <a href="https://mycompany.com">mycompany.com</a>
</p>
{% endblock %}
{% block footer %}
<p style="text-align: center;">My Company - All Rights Reserved</p>
{% endblock %}You can add file inputs to your form, and send those files via Email.
Just add an attachments field and list the file input fields names. You can have multiple file fields, and this will send all the files as attachments. Example:
form:
name: custom_form
fields:
my-file:
label: 'Add a file'
type: file
multiple: false
destination: user/data/files
accept:
- application/pdf
- application/x-pdf
- image/png
- text/plain
process:
email:
body: '{% include "forms/data.html.twig" %}'
attachments:
- 'my-file'
To have more control over your generated email, you may also use the following additional parameters:
reply_to: Set one or more addresses that should be used to reply to the message.cc(Carbon copy): Add one or more addresses to the delivery list. Many email clients will mark email in one's inbox differently depending on whether they are in theTo:orCc:list.bcc(Blind carbon copy): Add one or more addresses to the delivery list that should (usually) not be listed in the message data, remaining invisible to other recipients.charset: Explicitly set a charset for the generated email body (only takes effect ifbodyparameter is a string, defaults toutf-8)
Email-related parameters (from, to, reply_to, ccand bcc) allow different notations for single / multiple values:
to:
mail: [email protected]
name: Human-readable name
or inline:
to: {mail: '[email protected]', name: 'Human-readable name'}
to:
-
mail: [email protected]
name: Human-readable name
-
mail: [email protected]
name: Another human-readable name
-
[email protected]
-
[email protected]
or inline:
to:
- {mail: '[email protected]', name: 'Human-readable name'}
- {mail: '[email protected]', name: 'Another human-readable name'}
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Apart from a simple string, an email body may contain different MIME parts (e.g. HTML body with plain text fallback). You may even specify a different charset for each part (default to utf-8):
body:
-
content_type: 'text/html'
body: "{% include 'forms/default/data.html.twig' %}"
-
content_type: 'text/plain'
body: "{% include 'forms/default/data.txt.twig' %}"
charset: 'iso-8859-1'
The first step in determining why emails are not sent is to enable debugging. This can be done via the user/config/email.yaml file or via the plugin settings in the admin. Just enable this and then try sending an email again. Then inspect the logs/email.log file for potential problems.
By default, when sending via PHP or Sendmail the machine running the webserver will attempt to send mail using the SMTP protocol. This uses port 25 which is often blocked by ISPs to protected against spamming. You can determine if this port is blocked by running this command in your temrinal (mac/linux only):
(echo >/dev/tcp/localhost/25) &>/dev/null && echo "TCP port 25 opened" || echo "TCP port 25 closed"
If it's blocked there are ways to configure relays to different ports, but the simplest solution is to use SMTP for mail sending.
If you get an exception when sending email but you cannot see what the error is, you need to enable more verbose exception messages. In the user/config/system.yaml file ensure your have the following configuration:
errors:
display: 1
log: true
As explained above in the Configuration section, if you're using the default settings, set the Plugin configuration to use a SMTP server. It can be Gmail or another SMTP server you have at your disposal.
This is the first thing to check. The reason is that PHP Mail, the default system used by the Plugin, is not 100% reliable and emails might not arrive.