Laravel 5.7 - emails not being sent via command line - laravel

Question

I'm running a 5.7 laravel project and I can send emails from controllers with no issue.
However, when I'm trying to use the same logic to send emails from a command, launched from the command line, the emails are not sent and I get the following error :
In AbstractSmtpTransport.php line 445:
Expected response code 220 but got an empty response
Here is my command code :
<?php
namespace App\Console\Commands;
use App\Email_confirmation;
use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use App;
use Carbon\Carbon;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail;
use App\Mail\ShopOrderConfirmation;
class sendEmailConfirmations extends Command
{
/**
* The name and signature of the console command.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $signature = 'command:sendEmailConfirmations';
/**
* The console command description.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $description = 'Command description';
/**
* Create a new command instance.
*
* #return void
*/
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
}
/**
* Execute the console command.
*
* #return mixed
*/
public function handle()
{
$ec_global = Email_confirmation::where("due_date" ,">", Carbon::now('Europe/Paris'))->get();
if (!$ec_global->isEmpty()) {
foreach ($ec_global as $ec) {
if (App::environment('production')) {
$subject = $ec->shop_name . " - Order confirmation";
Mail::to($ec->contact_email)
->send(new ShopOrderconfirmation($ec->contact_name, $subject, $ec->shop_name, $ec->order_date));
}
elseif (App::environment('development','test')) {
$subject = $ec->shop_name . " - Order confirmation - TEST";
Mail::to("me#whatever.net")
->send(new ShopOrderconfirmation($ec->contact_name, $subject, $ec->shop_name, $ec->order_date));
}
}
}
else {
$this->info('Empty.');
}
}
}
The project is running the 6.0.2 version of the swiftmailer package. I can't find the reason why the behaviour is different here.

Answer 1

Please use the SMTP for sending emails with Swiftmailer
MAIL_DRIVER=smtp

Answer 2

Run env in your app directory to check if the Environment variables are getting through.
Make sure your MAIL_DRIVER property in .env is set to smtp.
You could also try tls for MAIL_ENCRYPTION too.
EDIT:
I just looked into SwiftMailer's AbstractSmtpTransport.php file and around line 445 there's this:
if (!$response) {
$this->throwException(new Swift_TransportException('Expected response code '.implode('/', $wanted).' but got an empty response'));
}
What that tells me is that you received no response from the mail server.
So once again I recommend checking the output of env from the app directory. If your environment variables are not reflected, try updating them and running:
php artisan cache:clear
php artisan config:clear
And run env once again to check if the updates are reflected.