Receive email in PHP: using MailSlurp to send and receive emails

Learn to Send and Receive Emails in PHP with MailSlurp's Free Email API. This tutorial shows how to test with real addresses. Get started now!

  • Table of contents

read email in php Sending and receiving real emails is easy in PHP with MailSlurp: a free email as a service API.

Getting started

You can install the official PHP library from packagist using composer:

First create a composer.json in your project root like so:

{
  "repositories": [
    {
      "type": "git",
      "url": "https://github.com/mailslurp/swagger-sdk-php.git"
    }
  ],
  "require": {
    "mailslurp/mailslurp-client-php": "dev-master",
    "phpunit/phpunit": "^8"
  }
}

Next run:

composer install

Write a test using real email addresses

Next, to demonstrate how to send and receive email in PHP using MailSlurp let's write a test that create two email addresses on demand and then sends an email between them. We will also use MailSlurp to extract email contents for a make-believe confirmation code.

<?php
require_once(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');

use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;

/**
 * This testsuite demonstrates how to use MailSlurp Email API Client in PHP
 *
 * MailSlurp lets you create real email addresses in PHP. You can then send and receive emails
 * and attachments in PHP applications and tests.
 *
 * See https://www.mailslurp.com/docs/ for more information.
 *
 */
final class EmailTest extends TestCase
{
    private function getConfig()
    {
        // create a mailslurp configuration with API_KEY environment variable
        // get your own free API KEY at https://app.mailslurp.com/sign-up/
        return MailSlurp\Configuration::getDefaultConfiguration()
            ->setApiKey('x-api-key', getenv("API_KEY"));
    }

    public function test_CanCreateAnInbox_ThenSendAndReceiveEmails()
    {
        // create an inbox controller
        $inboxController = new MailSlurp\Apis\InboxControllerApi(null, $this->getConfig());

        // create an inbox
        $inbox = $inboxController->createInbox();

        // verify inbox has an email address ending in @mailslurp.com
        $this->assertStringContainsString(
            "mailslurp.com",
            $inbox->getEmailAddress()
        );
    }

    public function test_CanSendAndReceiveEmail_BetweenTwoInboxes()
    {
        // create inbox and waitFor controllers
        $inbox_controller = new MailSlurp\Apis\InboxControllerApi(null, $this->getConfig());
        $wait_for_controller = new MailSlurp\Apis\WaitForControllerApi(null, $this->getConfig());

        // create two inboxes
        $inbox_1 = $inbox_controller->createInbox();
        $inbox_2 = $inbox_controller->createInbox();

        // send a confirmation code from inbox1 to inbox2 (sends an actual email)
        $send_options = new MailSlurp\Models\SendEmailOptions();
        $send_options->setTo([$inbox_2->getEmailAddress()]);
        $send_options->setSubject("Test");
        $send_options->setBody("Confirmation code = abc123");
        $inbox_controller->sendEmail($inbox_1->getId(), $send_options);

        // receive email for inbox2
        $timeout_ms = 30000;
        $unread_only = true;
        $email = $wait_for_controller->waitForLatestEmail($inbox_2->getId(), $timeout_ms, $unread_only);

        // verify emails content
        $this->assertEquals($inbox_1->getEmailAddress(), $email->getFrom());
        $this->assertEquals($inbox_2->getEmailAddress(), $email->getTo()[0]);
        $this->assertEquals("Test", $email->getSubject());
        $this->assertStringContainsString("Confirmation code = ", $email->getBody());

        // extract part of an email using regex (could be used in further test steps)
        $matches = array();
        preg_match('/.+code = (.+)/', $email->getBody(), $matches);
        $confirmation_code = $matches[1];
        $this->assertEquals($confirmation_code, "abc123");
    }

}