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Send HIPAA compliant transactional email with PHP

Picture of Hoala Greevy Hoala Greevy October 01, 2018

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Send HIPAA compliant transactional email with PHP

PHP Library for the Paubox Email API

The Paubox PHP wrapper allows you to construct and send secure, HIPAA compliant messages. This package is the official PHP wrapper for the Paubox Email API.

The Paubox Email API allows your application to send secure, HIPAA compliant email via Paubox and track deliveries and opens.

Installation

Using composer: Add Paubox to your composer.json file.

{
  "require": {
    "paubox/paubox-php": "~1"
  }
}

Getting Paubox Email API Credentials

You will need to have a Paubox account. You can sign up here.

Once you have an account, follow the instructions on the Rest API dashboard to verify domain ownership and generate API credentials.

Configuring API Credentials

Include your API credentials in your environment file.

$ echo "export PAUBOX_API_KEY='YOUR_API_KEY'" > .env
$ echo "export PAUBOX_API_USER='YOUR_ENDPOINT_NAME'" >> .env
$ source .env
$ echo ".env" >> .gitignore

Usage

To send email, prepare a Message object and call the sendMessage method of Paubox.

Sending messages

<?php require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php'; 
$paubox = new Paubox(); $message = new PauboxMailMessage(); 
$content = new PauboxMailContent(); $content->setPlainText("Hello World");

$header = new PauboxMailHeader();
$header->setSubject("Testing!");
$header->setFrom("sender@domain.com");

$recipients = array();
array_push($recipients,'recipient@example.com');

$message->setHeader($header);
$message->setContent($content);
$message->setRecipients($recipients);

$sendMessageResponse = new PauboxMailSendMessageResponse();
$sendMessageResponse = $paubox->sendMessage($message);
print_r($sendMessageResponse);

Allowing non-TLS message delivery

If you want to send non-PHI mail that does not need to be HIPAA-compliant, you can allow the message delivery to occur even if a TLS connection is unavailable.

This means the message will not be converted into a secure portal message when encountering a non-TLS connection.

To allow a non-TLS message delivery, call the setAllowNonTLS(true) method on the message object.

<?php require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php'; 
$paubox = new Paubox(); $message = new PauboxMailMessage(); 
$content = new PauboxMailContent(); $content->setPlainText("Hello World");

$header = new PauboxMailHeader();
$header->setSubject("Testing!");
$header->setFrom("sender@domain.com");

$recipients = array();
array_push($recipients,'recipient@example.com');

$message->setHeader($header);
$message->setContent($content);
$message->setRecipients($recipients);
$message->setAllowNonTLS(true);

$sendMessageResponse = new PauboxMailSendMessageResponse();
$sendMessageResponse = $paubox->sendMessage($message);
print_r($sendMessageResponse);

Adding Attachments and Additional Headers

<?php require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php'; 
$paubox = new Paubox(); $message = new PauboxMailMessage(); 
$content = new PauboxMailContent(); $content->setPlainText("Hello World");
$content->setHtmlText("Hello World");

$header = new PauboxMailHeader();
$header->setSubject("Testing!");
$header->setFrom("sender@domain.com");
$header->setReplyTo("reply_to@domain.com");

$firstAttachment = new PauboxMailAttachment();
$firstAttachment->setFileName("hello_world.txt");
$firstAttachment->setContentType("text/plain");
$firstAttachment->setContent("SGVsbG8gV29ybGQhn");

$secondAttachment = new PauboxMailAttachment();
$secondAttachment->setFileName("hello_world2.txt");
$secondAttachment->setContentType("text/plain");
$secondAttachment->setContent("SGVsbG8gV29ybGQhn");

$attachments = array();
array_push($attachments,$firstAttachment);
array_push($attachments,$secondAttachment);

$recipients = array();
array_push($recipients,'recipient@example.com');

$bcc = array();
array_push($bcc, 'recipient2@example.com');

$message->setHeader($header);
$message->setContent($content);
$message->setAttachments($attachments);
$message->setRecipients($recipients);
$message->setBcc($bcc);

$sendMessageResponse = new PauboxMailSendMessageResponse();
$sendMessageResponse = $paubox->sendMessage($message);
print_r($sendMessageResponse);

Checking Email Dispositions

The SOURCE_TRACKING_ID of a message is returned in the response of the sendMessage method.

To check the status for any email, use its source tracking id and call the getEmailDisposition method of Paubox:

<?php require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php'; 
$paubox = new Paubox(); 
$resp = $paubox->getEmailDisposition('SOURCE_TRACKING_ID');
print_r($resp);