Perfex Email System

You are a Perfex CRM email engineer. Your job is to send transactional email reliably from inside modules — using send_simple_email correctly, rendering email-client-safe templates, falling back gracefully when admin recipients aren't configured, and queueing retries for transient SMTP failures so the user flow never breaks.

Perfex has an email templates system (Setup → Email Templates) and a simple-send helper for ad-hoc messages. For module-owned emails that don't need user-editable templates, send_simple_email is the right primitive.

The 3 send paths

Primitive	When to use
$this->emails_model->send_simple_email($to, $subject, $body)	Module-owned emails, admin notifications
send_mail_template('slug', ...)	User-editable templates registered via register_merge_fields
Raw $this->email (CI library)	Don't. Use one of the above.

send_simple_email pattern

public function notify_admin($contact_id, $event) {
    $this->load->model('emails_model');

    $to = $this->admin_email();
    if (!$to) return;

    $data = [
        'contact_name' => get_contact_full_name($contact_id),
        'event'        => $event,
    ];

    $body = $this->_render_email_template('admin_notification', $data);

    try {
        $sent = $this->emails_model->send_simple_email(
            $to,
            _l('my_module_admin_notification_subject'),
            $body
        );
        if (!$sent) {
            $this->enqueue_email_retry($to, $subject, $body, $data);
        }
    } catch (Throwable $e) {
        log_message('error', 'my_module: send failed: ' . $e->getMessage());
        $this->enqueue_email_retry($to, $subject, $body, $data);
    }
}

Email failures MUST NOT fail the user flow. Wrap in try/catch, log the error, continue. The user already completed their action — don't punish them because SMTP blipped.

Admin-recipient fallback chain

When sending "notify the admin", fall back through configured options:

private function admin_email() {
    return get_option('my_module_admin_email')
        ?: get_option('contact_form_notification_email')
        ?: get_option('smtp_email')
        ?: null;
}

Remember: get_option('key') ?: fallback — never pass a default as a second arg.

Render email template with merge

Put templates in modules/my_module/views/emails/. Use inline styles and table layout — Gmail strips <style> blocks, <div> grids break in Outlook.

private function _render_email_template($template, array $data = []) {
    extract($data);
    ob_start();
    include(__DIR__ . '/../views/emails/' . $template . '.php');
    return ob_get_clean();
}

Template example (views/emails/admin_notification.php):

<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background:#f4f4f4;padding:24px;">
    <tr><td align="center">
        <table width="600" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background:#fff;border-radius:8px;padding:32px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;">
            <tr><td>
                <h1 style="margin:0 0 16px 0;font-size:20px;color:#111;">
                    New event from <?= htmlspecialchars($contact_name) ?>
                </h1>
                <p style="margin:0;color:#333;line-height:1.5;">
                    <?= htmlspecialchars($event) ?>
                </p>
            </td></tr>
        </table>
    </td></tr>
</table>

Always htmlspecialchars() user data. A newline in a name isn't a security issue but a <script> tag in one is.

Retry queue pattern

SMTP can transiently fail. Don't drop the email — enqueue it:

Schema

CREATE TABLE `tblmymodule_email_retries` (
    `id`            INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `to_email`      VARCHAR(191) NOT NULL,
    `subject`       VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    `body`          LONGTEXT NOT NULL,
    `context_json`  TEXT NULL,
    `attempts`      TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    `last_error`    TEXT NULL,
    `next_try_at`   DATETIME NOT NULL,
    `created_at`    DATETIME NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
    KEY `idx_next_try` (`next_try_at`, `attempts`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

Enqueue

private function enqueue_email_retry($to, $subject, $body, $context = []) {
    $this->db->insert(db_prefix() . 'mymodule_email_retries', [
        'to_email'     => $to,
        'subject'      => $subject,
        'body'         => $body,
        'context_json' => json_encode($context),
        'attempts'     => 0,
        'next_try_at'  => date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('+5 minutes')),
        'created_at'   => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
    ]);
}

Process via cron

Register a Perfex cron hook:

// module_name.php
hooks()->add_action('after_cron_run', 'my_module_process_email_retries');

function my_module_process_email_retries() {
    $CI =& get_instance();
    $CI->load->model('my_module/my_module_model');
    $CI->my_module_model->process_email_retries();
}

In the model:

public function process_email_retries() {
    $this->load->model('emails_model');

    // Prune > 7 days old
    $this->db->where('created_at <', date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('-7 days')));
    $this->db->delete(db_prefix() . 'mymodule_email_retries');

    // Grab up to 50 due, attempts < 5
    $this->db->where('next_try_at <=', date('Y-m-d H:i:s'));
    $this->db->where('attempts <', 5);
    $this->db->order_by('next_try_at', 'ASC');
    $this->db->limit(50);
    $queue = $this->db->get(db_prefix() . 'mymodule_email_retries')->result();

    foreach ($queue as $row) {
        try {
            $sent = $this->emails_model->send_simple_email($row->to_email, $row->subject, $row->body);
            if ($sent) {
                $this->db->where('id', $row->id)->delete(db_prefix() . 'mymodule_email_retries');
            } else {
                $this->_bump_retry($row, 'send_simple_email returned false');
            }
        } catch (Throwable $e) {
            $this->_bump_retry($row, $e->getMessage());
        }
    }
}

private function _bump_retry($row, $error) {
    $next_attempt = $row->attempts + 1;
    // Exponential backoff: 5min, 15min, 1h, 6h, 24h
    $backoffs = [5, 15, 60, 360, 1440];
    $minutes = $backoffs[min($next_attempt - 1, count($backoffs) - 1)];
    $this->db->where('id', $row->id)->update(db_prefix() . 'mymodule_email_retries', [
        'attempts'    => $next_attempt,
        'last_error'  => $error,
        'next_try_at' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime("+{$minutes} minutes")),
    ]);
}

Cap at 5 attempts. After that, alert the admin (another email!) or leave for manual review via the prune-at-7-days rule.

SMTP configuration check

If a dev environment has no SMTP configured, send_simple_email silently returns false. In a module's activation hook, warn:

if (!get_option('smtp_host')) {
    set_alert('warning', 'My Module: SMTP is not configured. Emails will queue but never send.');
}

Common SMTP pitfalls

The most common reason send_simple_email returns false or throws has nothing to do with your code — it's SMTP configuration. Know these before you debug application logic:

1. smtp_host / smtp_port mismatch gives misleading errors

The Setup → Settings → Email form accepts any value. If smtp_host is right but port is wrong, CI's email library throws generic "SMTP connection failed" errors that look like network problems. Always verify host/port against the provider's docs (Gmail: 587 TLS, Office365: 587 TLS, AWS SES: 587 TLS on regional endpoint). Port 25 almost never works on shared hosting — blocked outbound.

2. Enable mail_debug during initial setup

In application/config/email.php:

$config['mail_debug'] = TRUE;

This surfaces the actual SMTP conversation. Disable again before going live — debug output leaks into error responses if send fails mid-flow.

3. Gmail / Workspace: DMARC rejects From: spoofing

If you set smtp_email = you@gmail.com but From: on the message is noreply@yourapp.com, Gmail's DMARC policy rejects the send entirely. Two fixes:

• Set From: to match the authenticated SMTP account, OR
• Use a provider (SendGrid, AWS SES, Postmark) with domain-authenticated DKIM for noreply@yourapp.com

Perfex's admin notifications use smtp_email as From: by default — which is why Gmail-based installs sometimes silently stop sending admin emails after a domain config change.

4. $this->email->print_debugger() is your friend

Inside a try/catch around send_simple_email:

try {
    $sent = $this->emails_model->send_simple_email($to, $subject, $body);
    if (!$sent) {
        log_message('error', 'email failed: ' . $this->email->print_debugger(['headers']));
    }
} catch (Throwable $e) { /* ... */ }

print_debugger() returns headers + SMTP response codes — the actual reason, not CI's sanitized message.

5. CI's $config['smtp_timeout'] defaults to 5 seconds

Slow providers (AWS SES cold region, mail.com, any TLS handshake over high-latency link) exceed this. Bump in application/config/email.php:

$config['smtp_timeout'] = 30;

Timeout errors look identical to auth errors in Perfex's logs — a too-short timeout is a silent root cause of "email works locally, fails in production."

6. send_simple_email returns false, no exception

CI's email library catches most failure modes and returns false without throwing. Always check the return value AND wrap in try/catch — some errors (bad To: syntax, PHP mail() backend misconfigured) throw, others just silently return false. Your retry-queue code should handle both.

Related skills

• perfex-module-dev — registering the after_cron_run hook that processes the retry queue.
• perfex-database — DDL for tbl<module>_email_retries with the right column types.
• perfex-security — never log recipient email addresses or message bodies on failure (PII + token leak risk).

Upstream docs

• Perfex email templates: https://help.perfexcrm.com/email-templates/
• CI3 email library (underlying): https://codeigniter.com/userguide3/libraries/email.html