Laravel mail drivers

In Laravel, a mail driver is responsible for sending emails to users. Laravel provides several built-in mail drivers, including:

1. SMTP: This is the most common mail driver used in Laravel. It uses the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to send emails.
2. Sendmail: This driver uses the Sendmail command-line utility to send emails.
3. Mailgun: This driver uses the Mailgun API to send emails.
4. Postmark: This driver uses the Postmark API to send emails.
5. SparkPost: This driver uses the SparkPost API to send emails.
6. Amazon SES: This driver uses the Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) to send emails.
7. Gmail: This driver uses the Gmail API to send emails.
8. Mailgun Sandbox: This driver uses the Mailgun Sandbox API to send emails.

To configure a mail driver in Laravel, you need to publish the config/mail.php file and update the driver value in the mail configuration array. For example, to use the SMTP driver, you would update the driver value to smtp.

Here is an example of how to configure the SMTP driver:

'mail' => [
    'driver' => 'smtp',
    'host' => 'smtp.example.com',
    'port' => 587,
    'username' => 'your_email_username',
    'password' => 'your_email_password',
    'encryption' => 'tls',
],

You can also specify additional settings for the mail driver, such as the from address and the from_name value.

Once you have configured the mail driver, you can use the Mail facade to send emails in your Laravel application. For example:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail;

Mail::send('emails.welcome', ['user' => $user], function ($message) {
    $message->from('[email protected]', 'Your Name');
    $message->to($user->email, $user->name);
});

This code sends a welcome email to the user with the specified email address and name.

You can also use the Mail facade to send emails using a specific mail driver. For example:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail;

Mail::driver('smtp')->send('emails.welcome', ['user' => $user], function ($message) {
    $message->from('[email protected]', 'Your Name');
    $message->to($user->email, $user->name);
});

This code sends a welcome email using the SMTP mail driver.

It's worth noting that you can also use third-party mail drivers, such as Laravel Mailgun or Laravel Postmark, which provide additional features and functionality for sending emails.