How to get postfix working with Laravel 4

I needed the Laravel Mail class to work with my Ubuntu installation of Postfix, in order to send emails out to my application users. It’s actually really straight forward.

Assumptions

• Ubuntu 12.04 OS installed (or similar)
• Working installation of Postfix. If you don’t have it installed, check out my other article on how to install Postfix on Ubuntu
• Laravel 4 up and running

Update mail configuration

We need to make a minor update to app/config/mail.php. Open it up and edit the driver option to be sendmail

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Mail Driver
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Laravel supports both SMTP and PHP's "mail" function as drivers for the
| sending of e-mail. You may specify which one you're using throughout
| your application here. By default, Laravel is setup for SMTP mail.
|
| Supported: "smtp", "mail", "sendmail", "mailgun", "mandrill", "log"
|
*/
'driver' => 'sendmail',

Create email template

Create an email template inside of app/views/emails. I’ve named mine test-email.blade.php. Here’s the simple contents:

Hello {{ $firstName }}

Send out an email

Then inside somewhere relevant to your application (perhaps a controller), write up a simple mail function to check it’s working:

Mail::send(
  'emails.test-email',
  array( 'firstName' => Input::get( 'firstName' ) ),
  function( $message ) {
    $message->from( 'someone@example.com', 'Code Chewing' );
    $message->to(
      Input::get( 'email' ),
      Input::get( 'firstName' )
    )->subject( 'Welcome to Code Chewing!' );
  }
);

I’ve presumed that you’ve got input submitted from the user (their email and first name). For the break down of the Mail::send method, visit the official documentation.

Bonus Points

You can disable emailing and instead print out the email contents into the mail log, just as it would go out. This is great during development. Add the below line just before you call Mail::send()

Mail::pretend();

Laravel and Postfix in harmony. Just lovely that!