Doing my first steps with php and I am a bit confused. I have written a small script, which should take a POST request with some data, put the data in a formatted email and send it. For this I simply used PhpMailer and adapted the demo code. Apart from an outer try-catch resulting in a 500 response, this is my code for the return messages so far:
if($mail->send()){
http_response_code(200);
exit(json_encode(["message"=>"Mails sent successfully!"]));
}else{
http_response_code(500);
exit(json_encode(["message"=>"Mails not sent!", "error"=>$mail->ErrorInfo]));
}
The script works fine, I receive the email, but testing with cuRL I would expect a reponse body with {"message":"Mails sent successfully!"}, however I get a full server log, pretty much showing stuff I do not want to show (like the email address the script sends the email to - I have changed these here to generic ones):
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 11:35:17 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
2025-01-13 11:35:17 Connection: opening to smtp.myserver.com:587, timeout=5, options=array()<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 Connection: opened<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 220 mx01lb.myserver.com ESMTP Exim 4.97.1 Mon, 13 Jan 2025 12:35:17 +0100<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: EHLO www.some-domain.comt<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 250-mx01lb.myserver.com Hello www.some-domain.com [81.19.145.43]250-SIZE 157286400250-8BITMIME250-PIPELINING250-PIPECONNECT250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN250-STARTTLS250 HELP<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: STARTTLS<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 220 TLS go ahead<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: EHLO www.some-domain.comt<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 250-mx01lb.myserver.com Hello www.some-domain.comt [81.19.145.43]250-SIZE 157286400250-8BITMIME250-PIPELINING250-PIPECONNECT250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN250 HELP<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: AUTH LOGIN<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 334 VXNlcm5hbWU6<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: [credentials hidden]<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: [credentials hidden]<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 235 Authentication succeeded<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: MAIL FROM:<noreply@gmail.com><br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 250 OK<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: RCPT TO:<my.email@gmail.com><br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 250 Accepted<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: DATA<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 12:35:17 +0100<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: To: my.email@gmail.com<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: From: noreply@gmail.com<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: Subject: Neue Anfrage<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: Message-ID: <2Y6HJbBuepRuYZ701QYKlpqjgrub3EnrJjDSGyGRZzU@www.some-domain.comt><br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: X-Mailer: PHPMailer 6.9.3 (https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer)<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: MIME-Version: 1.0<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: Guten Tag, <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: sie haben eine neue Anfrage auf der Jugendseite bekommen. Folgende Daten wurden angegeben: <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: test: asdf <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: test2: qwer <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: Mit der Bitte um Bearbeitung. <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: Dein freundlicher Bot<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: <br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: .<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 250 OK id=1tXIiz-000000004RA-1doi<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 CLIENT -> SERVER: QUIT<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 SERVER -> CLIENT: 221 mx01lb.myserver.com closing connection<br>
2025-01-13 11:35:17 Connection: closed<br>
{"message":"Mails sent successfully!"}
After reading up a bit, I tried to add ob_clean(); before sending the return, but no luck. This doesn't seem to come from the output buffer, but is attached to the response somewhere. As mentioned, I have no prior PHP experience, but I would like to be in control what is returned and what not. Any suggestions are much appreciated.
This is because you have enabled the debugging output of PHPMailer, so when you execute the send method, these contents will be output. Just turn it off before sending:
$mail->SMTPDebug = SMTP::DEBUG_OFF;
Or output the debugging log to somewhere else:
$mail->Debugoutput = 'error_log';