wp_mail() is not working in localhost

Question

I'm trying to test wp_mail() in my local. When I var dump wp_mail,I get Boolean false.This is my code

    $to = "[email protected]";
    $subject = 'my subject';
    $message = 'I would like to work with you';
    $headers = '';


    $sent_message = wp_mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers);
    var_dump($sent_message); // i get boolean false here.
    if ( $sent_message ) {
        echo 'The test message was sent. Check your email inbox.';
    } else {
        echo 'The message was not sent!'; //this gets printed in d end.
    }

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

wp_mail() falls back to php's mail() function which requires a configured MTA (Message Transfer Agent) on your host. So either you install and configure such a MTA. If you're running a Linux like OS, SSMTP is an easy solution on which you can use any mail-provider to send your system mails via SMTP. Another MTA would be Sendmail, a full featured, yet difficult to configure MTA.

Or you simply use a plugin like WP Mail SMTP which implements a direct SMTP connection in PHP and bypass the mail() usage.

Answer 2

If anybody stumbles across this old question:

In my case, the reason was, I gave the site at localhost a name without a top-level domain. e.g. "mysite" (instead of "mysite.com"). So, WordPress assumed the "From" address to be "wordpress@mysite".

Phpmailer (which is called by wp_mail) then raised the error: "Invalid address: (From): wordpress@mysite"

Solution was to explicitly set the from address via the header:

    $headers[] = 'From: Wordpress<[email protected]>';
    $sent_message = wp_mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );

Then wp_mail worked.

Answer 3

Expanding on Ronni's helpful answer, here's how you can override the From: address for all outgoing mail:

if (defined('WP_CLI')) {
    WP_CLI::add_wp_hook('wp_mail_from', function () {
        return '[email protected]';
    });
} else {
    add_filter('wp_mail_from', function () {
        return '[email protected]';
    });
}

For my local development environment, I found it useful to place it in wp-config.php, at the very bottom, after require_once ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php';.

Added a workaround for wp-cli, since it doesn't provide add_filter() like WP would normally do.