Sending email Via SMTP with STARTTLS command with cakePHP - cakephp

Question

I have been asked to use an external SMTP server with the following instructions:
"We expect you to connect to port 25 in cleartext, then issue a STARTTLS to commence TLS/SSL. Then log in"
Is this possible and if so, how should I do it? As I understand it, this is different to setting the TLS to true in the smtp connection array, is that right?
UPDATE
Plodding towards victory here. Looking at the code in SmtpTransport.php I can see it matches up with the spec linked in the comments (obviously) but the block 102-107 seems to set the host to either client or localhost - I'm setting the remote ip in the host configuration. Am i doing it wrong?
Cakes code:
protected function _connect() {
$this->_generateSocket();
if (!$this->_socket->connect()) {
throw new SocketException(__d('cake_dev', 'Unable to connect to SMTP server.'));
}
$this->_smtpSend(null, '220');
if (isset($this->_config['client'])) {
$host = $this->_config['client'];
} elseif ($httpHost = env('HTTP_HOST')) {
list($host) = explode(':', $httpHost);
} else {
$host = 'localhost';
}
try {
$this->_smtpSend("EHLO {$host}", '250');
if ($this->_config['tls']) {
$this->_smtpSend("STARTTLS", '220');
$this->_socket->enableCrypto('tls');
$this->_smtpSend("EHLO {$host}", '250');
}
} catch (SocketException $e) {
if ($this->_config['tls']) {
throw new SocketException(__d('cake_dev', 'SMTP server did not accept the connection or trying to connect to non TLS SMTP server using TLS.'));
}
try {
$this->_smtpSend("HELO {$host}", '250');
} catch (SocketException $e2) {
throw new SocketException(__d('cake_dev', 'SMTP server did not accept the connection.'));
}
}
}
My Email Config:
public $smtp = array(
'transport' => 'Smtp',
'from' => array('me#example.com' => 'my name'),
'host' => 'secretipaddress',
'port' => 25,
'timeout' => 30,
'username' => 'me#example.com',
'password' => 'secretpassword',
'client' => null,
'log' => true,
'tls' => true
);

Answer 1

Enable the 'tls' to true in your config file app.php.
It work for me and in cakephp 3.1 with gmail smtp