Problems with paths and phpMailer

[mikey_w]

I can’t get phpMailer to work, and am really frustrated right now…

Here is my directory/file structure…

home_directory
    public_html
        contact-us.php


        utilities
            functions.php

    outside_root
        PHPMailerAutoload.php
        class.phpmailer.php
        class.smtp.php

Here are my key files…

contact-us.php

    require_once(WEB_ROOT . 'utilities/functions.php');

    // Code to sanitize and process submitted form.

    // Call phpMailer
    $emailResults = callPHPMailer($inquiryEmail, $to, $subject, $body);
//    mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);

    if ($emailResults){
        echo "Email was Successful!";
        exit();
                    
    }else{
        echo "Email Failed.";
        exit();
    }

functions.php

function callPHPMailer($from, $to, $subject, $body){
    require_once('../../outside_root/PHPMailerAutoload.php');

    $mail = new PHPMailer;

    // Email Server Log-in Credentials
    $mail->isSMTP();
    $mail->Host = 'xx.yy.zz.aa';
    $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
    $mail->Username = 'support@domain.com';
    $mail->Password = 'pass';
    $mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl';
    $mail->Port = 465;

    // Email Message Details
    $mail->From = $from;
    $mail->addAddress($to);
    $mail->isHTML(true);
    $mail->Subject = $subject;
    $mail->Body = $body;

    $mail->send();

    return $results;

}//End of callPHPMailer

---

Right now I get this error…

Warning: require_once(../../outside_root/PHPMailerAutoload.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory...

Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required 
'../../outside_root/PHPMailerAutoload.php' 
(include_path='.:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.4.10/lib/php') in...

When I had just …/outside_root… I kept seeing “Waiting on local.mysite” in the bottom of the browser window.

So then I tried to fix the path and now it errors out.

I’m not sure what is going on, and not knowing object-oriented programming doesn’t help when it comes to phpMailer.

Can someone please help me figure out what I am doing wrong?

[mikey_w]

Here is where I was going wrong…

While it would seem logical to use this path to point FROM “functions.php” TO “PHPMailerAutload.php”…

require_once('../../outside_root/PHPMailerAutoload.php');

…thing don’t work that way in PHP.

Because I INCLUDED “functions.php” in “contact-us.php”, PHP treats “functions.php” like it is at the same level as the including file.

So while it is physically here…

/public_html/utilities/functions.php

PHP treats it like it is here…

/public_html/

That of course messed up my path reference FROM “functions.php” TO “PHPMailerAutload.php”…

---

On a side note, another mysterious issue I was having at the same time of this one, but which seems to have disappeared was the fact that when I clicked “Submit” the Comment/Question was spinning out and I saw a “Waiting on local.mysite…” in the bottom of my browser.

Things failed several times, and then after supper, thing started working.

Not sure what that was all about.

Anyway, I think I have my first ever use of phpMailer working finally.

Not sure how much better it is than just mail( ), but they say it is?!

[mikey_w]

Here is one other crucial thing I had to do to make phpMailer work across my client’s site…

Since several different scripts - located in several different part of my directory-tree - INCLUDE “functions.php”, the solution I showed above only works if the parent script is in the Web Root.

To fix this, I created a constant called “HOME” like this…

// Home Directory.
define('HOME', ENVIRONMENT === 'dev'
        ? '/Users/mikey_w/Documents/25-Work/++htdocs/06_ACME/'
        : '/home/acme7/');

Then in my “functions.php” I was able to change things to this…

        // Access Email Classes.
        require_once(HOME . 'outside_root/PHPMailerAutoload.php');

This way, not matter which script INCLUDES “functions.php”, when “functions.php” then INCLUDES “PHPMailerAutoload.php”, things always work.

(Personally, I think it is stupid how this works in PHP w.r.t. INCLUDES, but at least I have a workaround!!)

There may be a more eloquent way to do this - especially in OOP - but it solved my problem, and I figured I would share here!

[Jeff_Mott]

@mikey_w

There may be a more eloquent way to do this - especially in OOP - but it solved my problem, and I figured I would share here!

You’re spot on. Another only slightly different option is to use __DIR__.

require_once(__DIR__.'/../../outside_root/PHPMailerAutoload.php');