Send email from EE template with file get contents

Question

I’m creating a custom ext. that handles form submission + email sending. When a form or reservation has been made the data is put in EE and 2 emails are being send. One email to the client and one to the admin. Sometimes my sendMail function doesn’t send the body of the first email and I’m getting an empty email. The body of the email is an EE template loaded with file_get_contents. When I add sleep(2) (delay execution) before the emails are send it works fine. I have no idea what the problem is.

Maybe I should do this in another way? Hope you guys can help me out.

public function template_fetch_template($row)
{
    // -------------------------------------------
    // Get the latest version of $row
    // -------------------------------------------
    if (ee()->extensions->last_call !== FALSE)
    {
        $row = ee()->extensions->last_call;
    }

    if (ee()->uri->segment(1) == "reservation")
    {
        $this->reservation();
    }

    return $row;
}

private function reservation()
{

    static $run;
    if ($run) return;

    if (ee()->uri->segment(1) == "reservation" && ee()->uri->segment(2) != "" && ee()->uri->segment(3) == "")
    {
        if (count($_POST))
        {
            $naam = $_POST["naam"];

            ee()->session->create_new_session(2);
            ee()->session->fetch_session_data();
            ee()->session->fetch_member_data();

            $channel_id = 21;

            ee()->load->library('api');
            ee()->api->instantiate('channel_entries');
            ee()->api->instantiate('channel_fields');

            $data = array(
                'entry_id'=> 0,
                'title'=> $naam,
                'entry_date'    => time(),
                'edit_date'     => time(),              
                'member_id'     => 2
            );

            ee()->api_channel_fields->setup_entry_settings($channel_id, $data);
            if (ee()->api_channel_entries->save_entry($data, $channel_id))
            {
                $entry_id = ee()->api_channel_entries->entry_id;

                sleep(2); 

                // CLIENT EMAIL     
                $this->sendMail("e-mail","client_".$this->res_email_template, $entry_id, “[email protected]”, "Client Reservatie ". ee()->config->_global_vars['site'] . " " . $entry_id);
                // ADMIN EMAIL
                $this->sendMail("e-mail","admin_".$this->res_email_template, $entry_id, “[email protected], "Admin Reservatie ". ee()->config->_global_vars['site']. " " . $entry_id);

                ee()->functions->redirect("/".ee()->uri->segment(1)."/".ee()->uri->segment(2)."/".$entry_id);
            }
        }
    }

    $run = true;
}

private function sendMail($template_group, $template, $entry_id, $to_email, $subject)
{
    $config = Array(
          'protocol' => 'smtp',
          'smtp_host' => 'smtp.priorweb.be',
          'smtp_timeout'=>30,
          'smtp_port' => 587,
          'mailtype' => 'html',
          'charset' => 'utf-8',
          'wordwrap' => FALSE
        );

    ee()->email->clear();
    ee()->load->library('email', $config);
        ee()->load->helper('text');
        ee()->email->mailtype = 'html';
        ee()->email->from(‘[email protected]'); 
        ee()->email->to($to_email); 
        ee()->email->subject($subject);
        ee()->email->message(entities_to_ascii(file_get_contents(ee()->config->site_url().ee()->publisher_lib->lang_code."/".$template_group."/".$template."/".$entry_id, FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH)));

        ee()->email->send();

        if ( ! ee()->email->send())
    {
            // Send failed, data was not cleared
            ee()->email->clear();
    }
}

/*****/ EMAIL TEMPLATE SOME HTML WITH THIS TAG

{exp:channel:entries channel="reserveer_berichten" limit="1" dynamic="off" entry_id="{segment_3}"}
    {title}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Answer 1

Have you considered using existing add-ons?

Freeform allows you to create forms on the frontend that store the submission in the database, has a Control Panel interface and allows for email sending (and customising the templates) to both the customer and admin. You can pass custom values from the form to be included in the email I believe.

Assuming you want to store the form data (reservation) in your own DB table, you can send them to another URL/template as a confirmation and trigger Email from Template, which allows you to send off an email using the content of a template (which could be populated by the form data they'd just entered).

Without actually solving your direct question as to why it works with the sleep and not without, I would express concern about the security of your code - at a basic level you're not checking for the validity of "naam", without reading up, I'm not sure if the API call makes security checks or assumes the data has already been sanitised (so possibly leaving the database open for injection) or more likely will your code allow the form to be used as a bot mailer?