Intercept all emails sent from Xampp Mercury Mail Server

Question

I have a Xampp Server that I use only in a development environment. In order to preview emails that would be sent from the live sites without actually sending them I would like to intercept all the emails sent from this server. I would like to be able to either send them all to a specific email or save them as files instead of sending them to whatever address they're set to go to. This way I can make sure they are correct without accidently sending emails during testing.

I found a similar question with an answer here but was unable to find a way to open any of the dialogs in the answer and so it didn't get me very far.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

You can accomplish this using the sendmail configuration within your php.ini.

Create a file named smtp_catcher.php and the set the sendmail_path

sendmail_path = "php C:\path\to\file\smtp_catcher.php"

Then in your smtp_catcher.php add this block:

#!/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin
<?php

# create a filename for the emlx file
list($ms, $time) = explode(' ', microtime());
$filename = dirname(__FILE__).'/'.date('Y-m-d h.i.s,', $time).substr($ms,2,3).'.emlx';

# write the email contents to the file
$email_contents = fopen('php://stdin', 'r');
$fstat = fstat($email_contents);
file_put_contents($filename, $fstat['size']."\n");
file_put_contents($filename, $email_contents, FILE_APPEND);

# open up the emlx file (using Apple Mail)
exec('open '.escapeshellarg($filename));

?>

Now I am not sure what extension you'll need to use to view the emails but this should catch all emails going out.

NOTE: make sure that php is in your window's environment PATH