What are the advantages of using mailer classes like PHPMailer or SwiftMailer over the traditional mail() function in PHP for sending emails with special characters and different encodings?

When sending emails with special characters or different encodings in PHP using the traditional mail() function, you may encounter issues with encoding and formatting. Mailer classes like PHPMailer or SwiftMailer provide more robust features for handling different character sets and encodings, making it easier to send emails with special characters without running into encoding issues. 

// Example using PHPMailer to send an email with special characters and different encodings

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

// Create a new PHPMailer instance
$mail = new PHPMailer();

// Set the mail server details
$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.example.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'your@example.com';
$mail->Password = 'yourpassword';
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$mail->Port = 587;

// Set the email content
$mail->CharSet = 'UTF-8';
$mail->Encoding = 'base64';
$mail->setFrom('from@example.com', 'Sender Name');
$mail->addAddress('recipient@example.com', 'Recipient Name');
$mail->Subject = 'Subject with special characters éàü';
$mail->Body = 'Email body with special characters éàü';

// Send the email
if(!$mail->send()) {
    echo 'Email could not be sent.';
    echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
    echo 'Email has been sent';
}

Keywords

PHPMailer SwiftMailer mail() function special characters encodings

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