no support for RFC 5322 address format

[mehgcap]

Problem description

When calling setFrom, addAddress, and other methods that take in email addresses, strings compliant with section 3.4 of RFC 5322 are not supported. For example,

$mailer->setFrom("Some Name somename@example.com");

will fail. Calling the same method using the email address as the first argument, and the name as the second, will work.

Code to reproduce

$mailer = new PHPMailer();
$mailer->setFrom("Some Name <somename@example.com>");

Debug output

N/A

Suggested Improvement

Methods that work with addresses should check to see if the string matches a regular expression. If the string matches, it should be broken into name and email parts, then handled normally. The below is only partial, as it doesn't consider addresses using Unicode characters, nor does it cover the full set of possible formats listed in RFC 5322. Still, it's a start. Note that this code also allows the caller to pass a string or an array of strings. It's a method from a class, and is called like this: $mailer->setAddressField("cc", $mailer, $ccAddresses);

    private function setAddressField(string $fieldType, PHPMailer $mailer, array | string $addresses): PHPMailer {
        // we can't use the normal "name <email@example.com>" format, so if that's present, extract the name and address
        $regex = "/^([\w\s]+) <([^>]+)>$/";
        // it's easier if we always work with an array of strings
        if(is_string($addresses)) {
            $addresses = [$addresses];
        }
        foreach($addresses as $address) {
            if (preg_match($regex, $address, $matches)) {
                $name = $matches[1];
                $emailAddress = $matches[2];
            } else {
                $name = null;
                $emailAddress = $address;
            }
            if($fieldType == "from") {
                $mailer->setFrom($emailAddress, $name);
            } elseif($fieldType == "to") {
                $mailer->addAddress($emailAddress, $name);
            } elseif($fieldType == "cc") {
                $mailer->addCC($emailAddress, $name);
            } elseif($fieldType == "bcc") {
                $mailer->addBCC($emailAddress, $name);
            }
        }
        return $mailer;
    }

[Synchro]

That's not really good enough. It works the way it does because the addresses are expected to conform to RFC5321 rather than 5322, because it's far, far easier to build a 5322 address from a 5321 address than vice versa. Similarly, PHPMailer doesn't support comments in addresses, which is a 5322-only feature, but your pattern won't match that either.

If you need this specific support for your own app, this exactly what child classes are for.

[mehgcap]

Fair enough. Handling email programmatically isn't something I've done too much of. My main experience is with Python, using the built-in mime and smtplib libraries. Using RFC 5322 formatted addresses worked there, and it's how I've seen all mail clients I've ever used present names/addresses, so I assumed it was a standard any mail package would support.

Yes, I already have a subclass to handle this for me. I just didn't know why it wasn't present in PHPMailer.

[Synchro]

How email clients present things is 5322, how messages are actually sent is 5321; you can't use a 5322 address in SMTP. Put it like this: this is a valid 5322 address (yes, including the line breaks):

(
 RCPT TO:user@example.com
 DATA
 Subject: spam10

 Hello,
 this is a spam mail.
.
QUIT
) a@exa(
nowhere
)mple.net

While that's valid, accepting it is a very bad idea (and I doubt any client will render it well), and it's difficult to reliably parse out the RFC5321 address (which in this case is just a@example.net). It's possible (but not reasonable) to parse 5322 email addresses using regular expressions, not least because they need to be recursive to match nested comments. An RFC822 expression is:

(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:(?:(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]
)+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|"(?:[^\"\r\\]|\\.|(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]))*"(?:(?:
\r\n)?[ \t])*)(?:\.(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(
?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|"(?:[^\"\r\\]|\\.|(?:(?:\r\n)?[ 
\t]))*"(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*))*@(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\0
31]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\
](?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*)(?:\.(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+
(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\](?:
(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*))*|(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z
|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|"(?:[^\"\r\\]|\\.|(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]))*"(?:(?:\r\n)
?[ \t])*)*\<(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:@(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\
r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\](?:(?:\r\n)?[
 \t])*)(?:\.(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)
?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\](?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]
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 \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\](?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*
)(?:\.(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]
)+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\](?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*))*)
*:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*)?(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+
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\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|"(?:[^\"\r\\]|\\.|(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t
]))*"(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*))*@(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031
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(?:[^\"\r\\]|\\.|(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]))*"(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*))*@(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]
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:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[
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?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]))*"(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*)*\<(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:@(?:[^()<>@,;
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00-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|"(?:[^\"\r\\]|\\
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\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\](?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*)(?:\.(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[
^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]
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?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[
\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|"(?:[^\"\r\\]|\\.|(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]))*"(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t
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".\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\](?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*))*)*:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*)?
(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".
\[\]]))|"(?:[^\"\r\\]|\\.|(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t]))*"(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*)(?:\.(?:(?:
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+|\Z|(?=[\["()<>@,;:\\".\[\]]))|\[([^\[\]\r\\]|\\.)*\](?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*)(?:\
.(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])*(?:[^()<>@,;:\\".\[\] \000-\031]+(?:(?:(?:\r\n)?[ \t])+|\Z
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?:\r\n)?[ \t])*))*)?;\s*)

[mehgcap]

Thank you for the explanation. I've learned a lot here. And that regex is painful!