Send single email according to Weblesson - ajax

Question

I'm new to programming, currently searching for ways to only send a single email like what Web lesson had taught me (bulk email I don't want), here is the link:'How to Send Bulk Email in PHP using PHPMailer with Ajax JQuery'.
I have two places to run this function, one is index.blade.php, and one is ClientController.
index.blade.php
<form action="{{ route('clients.destroy',$client->id) }}" method="POST">
<a href="{{ route('clients.edit',$client->id) }}">
<i class="fas fa-pencil-alt"></i>
</a>
<button type="button" name="email_button" class="email_button"
id="{{ $client->_id }}"
method="post" action="single" email_data="{{ $client->email }}">
<i class="fas fa-envelope"></i>
</button>
#csrf
#method('DELETE')
<button type="submit"><i class="far fa-trash-alt"></i></button>
</form>
here's my JQuery and Ajax at the bottom of index.blade.php
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
$('.email_button').click(function(){
$(this).attr('disabled', 'disabled');
var id = $(this).attr("id");
var action = $(this).data("action");
var email_data = $(this).data("email_data");
$.ajax({
url:'{{ route('send-email-test') }}',
method:'POST',
data:{email_button: email_data, _token: '{{csrf_token()}}'},
beforeSend:function(){
$('#'+id).html('Sending...');
$('#'+id).addClass('uk-text-danger');
},
success:function(data){
if(data = 'ok')
{
$('#'+id).text('Success');
$('#'+id).removeClass('uk-text-danger');
$('#'+id).removeClass('uk-text-info');
$('#'+id).addClass('uk-text-success');
}
else
{
$('#'+id).text(data);
}
$('#'+id).attr('disabled', false);
}
});
});
});
</script>
Here's my route and script
// Here's my script in layout
<script src="{{ asset('js/jquery.min.js') }}" type="text/javascript"></script>
// Here's my route
Route::post('send-email-test','ClientController#send_mail')->name('send-email-test');
After creating the index, I'm trying to use ajax to route to my controller.
ClientController
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use App\Models\Company\Client\Client;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\SMTP;
class ClientController extends Controller
{
public function send_mail()
{
if(isset($_POST["email_data"]))
{
require 'vendor/phpmailer/phpmailer/src/Exception.php';
require 'vendor/phpmailer/phpmailer/src/PHPMailer.php';
require 'vendor/phpmailer/phpmailer/src/SMTP.php';
require 'class/class.phpmailer.php';
$output = '';
foreach($_POST['email_data'] as $row)
{
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
$mail->Port = '587'; //Initially is 465, doesn't work
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'xxxxxxx#gmail.com';
$mail->Password = 'xxxxxxx';
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls'; //Initially is SSL, doesn't work either
$mail->From = 'xxxxxxxx#gmail.com';
$mail->FromName = 'Coverage Giant';
$mail->addAddress($row["email_data"]);
$mail->To($row["email_data"]);
$mail->WordWrap = 50;
$mail->IsHTML(true);
$mail->Subject = 'Welcome To Coverage Giant';
$mail->Body = '
<p>Sed at odio sapien. Vivamus efficitur</p>
';
$mail->AltBody = '';
$client_email = $mail->Send();
if($$client_email["code"] == '400')
{
$output .= html_entity_decode($client_email['full_error']);
}
}
if($output == '')
{
echo 'ok';
}
else
{
echo $output;
}
}
}
}
As you can see, I'm doing something opposite from the Web lesson because Webslesson uses index.php and send_mail.php, I'm using index.blade.php and ClientController. Since after applying what Websleeson has shown to me, it doesn't function well, so I reverse the engine a bit, thinking maybe it might work the other way round.
My problem now is, my JQuery and Ajax are functioning correctly, and it's able to route to ClientController from index.blade.php. Still, after routing to the controller, it seems that I can't send a single email using PHPMailer; maybe something is wrong with my controller and PHPMailer?
I was also wondering, is there a better way to send a single email?
BTW, I'm using MongoDB and Laravel. My UI is Uikit instead of Boostrap.

Answer 1

Since you're using Laravel, it is indeed easier to use Laravel's built-in mail classes, but you've got this far with PHPMailer so I'll help you clean this up...
You're loading two different copies of PHPMailer at the same time. This is very likely to cause major problems! class.phpmailer.php is from a very old version that you should not be using. It also looks like you have based your code on a very old PHPMailer example – use the latest ones from the repo.
If you're using composer properly (which you should be given you've set up a Laravel project), you should not need any of those require lines - the autoloader will load the classes for you if you added phpmailer/phpmailer to your composer.json requires, as described in the readme.
Port should be an integer, not a string:
$mail->Port = 465;
There is no To() method; call addAddress to add recipients.
When sending multiple messages in a loop, create the instance outside the loop, and re-use it for each message, remembering to call $mail->clearAddresses(); at the end of each iteration, as shown in the mailing list example.
This is peculiar code, and wrong because send() returns a boolean, not an array:
if($$client_email["code"] == '400')
and it doesn't provide code or full_error properties. You're looking for ErrorInfo, as shown in all the examples.
Overall, always refer to the original docs and examples when using any open source package – making up random stuff and expecting it to work is not going to serve you well.