Planet CakePHP

Hello,

I am new to CakePHP and trying desperately to learn!

My most recent struggle is with the Email Component.

I have a contract. When I create the contract, I add a user. When I save the new contract...for the first time, I want to send an email to the user in that contract that allows them to click on a link back to the contract, and then accept or reject the contract.

How do I send this email?

The more details I can get, answer-wise, the better. Everything I have read out there is surprisingly confusing. Do I need to configure smtp settings? How do I grab the user in the contract after it has been saved and pass it and the link to the contract on to the email? How do I know if the email has been sent, without going and checking my email every single time?

Here is the code I have in my contracts_controller.php for the email sending function: (A Contract belongsTo a User, and a User hasMany Contracts.)

function _sendContractEmail($id) {
        $this->Email->smtpOptions = array(
        'port'=>'465',
        'timeout'=>'30',
        'host'=>'ssl://smtp.gmail.com',
        'username'=>'username',
        'password'=>'password'
        );
        $this->Email->delivery = 'smtp';
        $User = $this->Contract->User->read(null,$id);
        $this->Email->to = '[email protected]';
        $this->Email->subject = '';
        $this->Email->replyTo = '[email protected]';
        $this->Email->from = 'Jeremiah Oits ';
        $this->Email->template = 'simple_message';
        $this->Email->sendAs = 'html';
        $this->set('User', $User);
        $this->Email->_debug = true;
        $this->Email->send('Test Email');
        $this->redirect(array('controller'=>'contracts', 'action'=>'index'));
    }

Here is the code I have in my contracts_controller.php add() function:

function add() {
        if (!empty($this->data)) {
            $this->Contract->create();
            if ($this->Contract->save($this->data)) {
                $this->Session->setFlash(__('The Contract has been saved', true));
                $this->_sendContractEmail($this->Contract->User->id);
            } else {
                $this->Session->setFlash(__('The Contract could not be saved. Please, try again.', true));
            }

And, this is at the top of my contracts_controller.php file after the $name and $helpers:

var $components = array('Email');

I guess I should point out that I was having trouble with the template, so to test it, I included the body of the email directly in the send(), and I specified the to email address rather than using a variable. Still...nothing! No error, no email.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I really have no idea what I am doing wrong!

Thanks,

Jeremiah