Mail Laravel Package

Getting Started

Start by installing the package via Composer: composer require pear/mail. This package is part of the PEAR ecosystem and provides an abstract interface for sending emails—currently supporting SMTP, sendmail, and the built-in PHP mail() function. Begin by instantiating the appropriate driver: Mail::factory('smtp', $params), Mail::factory('sendmail', $params), or Mail::factory('mail'). The factory method returns a Mail object with a send() method accepting recipients, headers, and body. For a minimal example using the mail driver:

require_once 'Mail.php';
$mail = Mail::factory('mail');
$headers = ['From' => 'you@example.com', 'Subject' => 'Test'];
$body = 'Hello, world!';
$mail->send('recipient@example.com', $headers, $body);

Check the PEAR Mail documentation or Mail.php source for supported driver options (e.g., SMTP host, port, auth).

Implementation Patterns

• Abstraction Layer: Use Mail::factory() to decouple email transport logic—switch between SMTP, sendmail, or mail() via config without changing business code.
• Template Integration: Combine with templating (e.g., Twig) to generate HTML/text bodies, then pass to send().
• Bulk Sending: Iterate over recipient lists, personalizing headers/body and sending individually (note: PEAR Mail doesn’t batch—set up SMTP with persistent connections or a separate queue for high volume).
• Error Handling: Capture PEAR_Error from send() and inspect getMessage() for debugging—e.g., SMTP rejection details.
• Testing: Swap Mail::factory('mail') with a mock or log driver in tests; some projects use a custom wrapper class for easier substitution.

Gotchas and Tips

• No Namespacing: This is legacy PEAR code—uses global namespace. Avoid conflicts by ensuring autoloading doesn’t interfere (e.g., no PSR-4 clash on Mail class name). Use Composer’s include-path autoloading carefully.
• Deprecation Status: PEAR is largely unmaintained; consider modern alternatives like Symfony Mailer or Laravel’s built-in mailer for new projects—but this package remains functional for legacy support.
• SMTP Auth: For SMTP, credentials are passed in the factory options array: ['host' => 'smtp.example.com', 'auth' => true, 'username' => '...', 'password' => '...'].
• Headers Formatting: Recipient addresses in headers (e.g., To, Cc) must be properly RFC-compliant (e.g., "Name <email@example.com>"). Use Mail::normalizeRecipients() (if available) or Mail_RFC822::parseAddressList() from Mail_RFC822 package.
• Missing Dependencies: Some drivers (e.g., SMTP) rely on Net_SMTP. Run composer require pear/net_smtp if you see “Class ‘Net_SMTP’ not found” errors.
• No PSR-17/18 Support: This is pre-PSR mail handling—cannot directly integrate with PSR mail message implementations. Wrap if bridging legacy and modern code.