Fatal error: Class 'PHPMailer' not found in

Question

Fatal error: Class 'PHPMailer' not found in C:\wamp\www\sendemail.php on line 13

This is line 13:

$mail = new PHPMailer();

I have already researched and they say you need to have these:

require_once('class.pop3.php');
require_once('class.phpmailer.php');
require_once('class.smtp.php');
require_once('PHPMailerAutoload.php');

But I already have those and they reside in the same folder as sendemail.php but still the same error.

<?php
/**
 * This example shows settings to use when sending via Google's Gmail servers.
*/
//SMTP needs accurate times, and the PHP time zone MUST be set
//This should be done in your php.ini, but this is how to do it if you don't have access to that
date_default_timezone_set('Etc/UTC');
require_once('class.pop3.php');
require_once('class.phpmailer.php');
require_once('class.smtp.php');
require_once('PHPMailerAutoload.php');
//Create a new PHPMailer instance
$mail = new PHPMailer;
//Tell PHPMailer to use SMTP
$mail->isSMTP();
//Enable SMTP debugging
// 0 = off (for production use)
// 1 = client messages
// 2 = client and server messages
$mail->SMTPDebug = 2;
//Ask for HTML-friendly debug output
$mail->Debugoutput = 'html';
//Set the hostname of the mail server
$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
// use
// $mail->Host = gethostbyname('smtp.gmail.com');
// if your network does not support SMTP over IPv6
//Set the SMTP port number - 587 for authenticated TLS, a.k.a. RFC4409 SMTP submission
$mail->Port = 587;
//Set the encryption system to use - ssl (deprecated) or tls
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
//Whether to use SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
//Username to use for SMTP authentication - use full email address for gmail
$mail->Username = "email@email.com";
//Password to use for SMTP authentication
$mail->Password = "password";
//Set who the message is to be sent from
$mail->setFrom('email@email.com', 'name');
//Set an alternative reply-to address
//$mail->addReplyTo('replyto@example.com', 'First Last');
//Set who the message is to be sent to
$mail->addAddress('email@sample.com', 'name');
//Set the subject line
$mail->Subject = 'PHPMailer GMail SMTP test';
//Read an HTML message body from an external file, convert referenced images to embedded,
//convert HTML into a basic plain-text alternative body
$mail->msgHTML(file_get_contents('contents.html'), dirname(__FILE__));
//Replace the plain text body with one created manually
$mail->AltBody = 'This is a plain-text message body';
//Attach an image file
//$mail->addAttachment('images/phpmailer_mini.png');
//send the message, check for errors
if (!$mail->send()) {
    echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
    echo "Message sent!";
}

Here is my file layout:

Answer 1

I encountered the same issue, and managed to solve it by entering the following two lines at the very top of the PHP script used for sending the mail - not just in the files I required.

<?php
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
?>

Let me know if it works for you as well.

Answer 2

Add all those extra require lines are not going to help; Just load the autoloader, like the original example code says. Try loading it from an absolute path:

require '/full/path/to/PHPMailerAutoload.php';

If that works, you need to check that your include_path setting in php.ini includes the directory you're loading from - for example that it contains . as one of the paths.

I'm pretty convinced this is an environment/config problem, not code, so try a completely minimal script, just this:

<?php
require 'class.phpmailer.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer;

If you're doing new development, you should really be using composer anyway - it completely solves include problems and you'll never have to worry about where your libraries are again.