Title: wp_mail() hiding recipient errors Last modified: January 28, 2021 --- # wp_mail() hiding recipient errors * [sporkme](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sporkme/) * (@sporkme) * [5 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_mail-hiding-recipient-errors/) * I wanted to run this by someone before possibly opening a bug… * After spending some time looking at why some mail-tags that allow replacement of from/to/and other headers in Contact Form 7 were not working (but not throwing an error), I started adding a bunch of debug statements in CF7. Everything looked fine, and where it called wp_mail(), there was no error. * I then moved on to adding more debug stuff in wp-includes/pluggable.php. * I followed things down to around line 260 where individual headers are parsed, and then down to line 303 where the reply-to is added. My debugging showed me that even though I was in that block within the switch statement, my “reply-to” was not being added. I was however able to see that I had the formatting wrong– there were multiple recipients, and I had “” which got chunked into two addresses, “”, neither of which passed PHPMailer’s validation. * My thought is that if there’s an error in adding any of these addresses, wp_mail() should pass it on up the chain. The whole routine is wrapped in “try/catch”, but nothing is done with the error. * Is this perhaps considered a bug in that end users of anything that calls “wp_mail()”( core, plugins) would spend an inordinate amount of time tracking down why mail is not sending… Thoughts? * I also elaborated on this in the CF7 forum ([https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mail-tags-ignored-for-from-and-reply-to/?view=all](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/mail-tags-ignored-for-from-and-reply-to/?view=all)), if that’s at all helpful, but to be clear, I’m NOT asking about plugin help, just wp_mail() itself and error handling… Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total) * Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/) * (@bcworkz) * [5 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_mail-hiding-recipient-errors/#post-13976995) * Is this failing to send the message, or just failing to add poorly formatted Reply-To: addresses and sending anyway? If the message fails to send, `false` ought to be returned so the caller can do something else. But if the message is sent anyway, I don’t see address rejection as a reason to return an error. * So maybe not a “bug” per se, but I do agree that doing nothing is poor behavior. The address rejection is handled at line 414 with `continue;`, meaning it’s ignored. We ought to do more than that, but I don’t think returning an error is appropriate. At least log a warning message or something. This is a pluggable function, so we’re free to add whatever process we want ahead of `continue;`. * It would be nice to have an action hook inserted there so we could add in an exception handler without having to plug in an entire replacement function. * Thread Starter [sporkme](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sporkme/) * (@sporkme) * [5 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_mail-hiding-recipient-errors/#post-13999130) * Sorry I drifted away from this one… * Yes, the message is sent, but is missing the headers. * Personally, even just something, anything that would show up with debug enabled would be great. The error I tracked down ended up being really simple, but was nearly impossible to find by digging in logs and adding extra debugging in the plugin. I mean, maybe even displaying the error in all cases is worth something? If a user is expecting certain parameters to be set for the mail message and those are not being set do to a syntax problem, it seems like telling them is generally a good thing? * PHPMailer does give a very nice and verbose answer when you screw up: * ``` in wp_mail() - address checker, adding reply-to as addr and name Invalid address: (Reply-To):
in wp_mail() - before switch() on address_header reply_to in wp_mail() - address checker, adding reply-to as addr and name css-chelsea@example.com> Invalid address: (Reply-To): css-chelsea@example.com>
``` * Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/) * (@bcworkz) * [5 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_mail-hiding-recipient-errors/#post-14003761) * I could see returning a status code instead of a boolean. 0 for complete failure, xFF for normal completion, something in between for sent but errors were encountered. * The simplest change would be to add a filter before the line 414 `continue;` so we can easily implement our own solution if there’s a PHPmailer exception. Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total) The topic ‘wp_mail() hiding recipient errors’ is closed to new replies. * In: [Developing with WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/wp-advanced/) * 3 replies * 2 participants * Last reply from: [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/) * Last activity: [5 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_mail-hiding-recipient-errors/#post-14003761) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics