#3359·PHPMailer

Write or document a replacement for parseAddresses

Author: SynchroCreated Sep 10, 2026Updated Sep 10, 2026
LabelsHelp wantedDocumentationGood first projectHacktoberfest

The PHPMailer::parseAddresses() static method presents a few problems. To work correctly in the face of real-world messages, it needs to use a complete, fully-specified MIME parser. This was available in the PHP IMAP extension, however, that extension was deprecated in PHP 8.3 and removed in 8.4. This led to the implementation of a fallback parser that did some basic string splitting, but this was not reliable and was possibly insecure. It's also the only part of PHPMailer that handled existing messages rather than new ones, and as such is outside PHPMailer's design scope. For these reasons, parseAdresses() has been deprecated and will be removed in PHPMailer 8.0.

I don't want to leave everyone using this method out in the cold though, so I'm looking for suggestions for documentation or external implementations that could provide this functionality, for example by using imapengine. It may be as simple as providing a standalone function that you can copy into your own project.

No AI slop please.