I'm sending mail with the mail() function of php. I embed image using base64 encoding inside the html code, but in gmail for example it doesn't show.
I read that a best way to do that is to use cid in the html code and attaching the image but I find only codes using phpmailer which I would like to avoid but the question is, is it possible with the php mail function or is there some simple classes to simplify the process ?
$message = $html_mail;
$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'To: '. $to . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: My website <'.$admin_mail.'>' . "\r\n";
$response = mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
Instead to using base64_encode image you should use html image tag with src path of your server, so it will download from your server.
<img src="http://www.yourserver.com/myimages/image1.jpg">
As your mail is having text/html header image will automatically parse via email client.
If you look at the "Original Source" in Gmail, you may find that gmail is editing the html to remove the image. idk if it does that or not though. I would try copying the html from the email in gmail and putting it in an html file and see if it loads in a browser correctly. Then you'll know for sure if gmail is messing it up or if it's a bug in another place.
FYI, sending html emails that work in all email clients can be a huge PAIN. The best guide I know of is this - https://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-code-html-email-newsletters/ . SitePoint also sells a book about it that is the gold standard IMO.
Good luck!
Related
I'm working on building a mailing script in PHP. I have this code:
$mime_boundary = "---".md5(time());
$message = 'Content-Type: application/pdf;name="datenschutz.pdf";charset=utf-8\n';
$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n\n";
$fileContents = file_get_contents("/datenschutz.pdf");
$message .= chunk_split(base64_encode($fileContents)) . "\r\n\r\n";
$message .= "--$mime_boundary--";
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
I'm aware that PHPMailer exists, alongside other libraries which would make this easier, but the problem is that I want to sell this software eventually and host it on different servers, so installing a library every time wouldn't be optimal. Therefore, I want to mostly use built-in PHP features.
I do recieve the email, and there is a PDF file attached to it, but neither Browsers nor Adobe Reader can open it.
I personally believe that it is because of the Base64 encoding, since I decoded the file once on a webpage and it worked just fine.
How Am I able to tell the Email program/Adobe Reader to decode the file from base64?
Thanks in advance
Edit: I replaced all different linebreaks with \n\n and redesigned the Content-Type strings so that they are strings with double-quotes. Sadly, it still does not work.
I'm working on an email send and tracking application, but I'm running into a problem that I just can't figure out. I want to us a tracking image in my emails but I'm getting some strange behavior. Currently, I'm sending out emails encoded in base64. In the body of the HTML message I'm using an HTML image tag with a link to a PHP file on my server. That file sends back an image using the following PHP code:
header("Content-Type: image/png");
readfile("full-server-path-to-image.png");
This is where it gets strange. If I view the message in the Outlook email client the image will not display (just shows red "X" image icon). Other normally linked images will display just fine though. If I view the same message in Gmail I am able to see all of the images. It's really weird that the image serves up just fine in some email clients but not all of them.
I noticed this problem started when I changed to encoding my messages in base64. Before I started encoding my messages I was able to view all images in any email client. My gut is telling me this has something to do with the content-encoding-type, but I have no idea how to fix it. Any help would be appreciated!
Here is the PHP code I'm using to send out messages:
$myHTMLmessage = chunk_split(base64_encode('
<html><head></head><body>
<img src="https://www.my-web-site.com/openTrack.php?t={trackerid}"></a>
</body></html>'));
$boundary = uniqid('np');
$to = "somebody-else#another-web-site.com"
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "From: somebody#my-web-site.com\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/alternative;boundary=" . $boundary . "\r\n";
$message = "This is a MIME encoded message.";
$message .= "\r\n\r\n--" . $boundary . "\r\n";
$message .= "Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8\r\n";
$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n\r\n";
//Plain text body
$message .= "some plain text";
$message .= "\r\n\r\n--" . $boundary . "\r\n";
$message .= "Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8\r\n";
$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n\r\n";
//Html body
$message .= $myHTMLmessage;
$message .= "\r\n\r\n--" . $boundary . "--";
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
Just in case anyone runs into something like this I figured out it all boils down to how email clients encode urls. In my original code I am using a url with 2 parameters inside my image src attribute. Like this:
http://www.my-web-site.com/page.php?pram1=something&pram2=something
When Outlook processes this url it get changed to:
http://www.my-web-site.com/page.php?pram1=something&pram2=something
Other email clients are smart enough to leave the & symbol the way it is without converting it to &
In my live code I needed to $_GET both url parameters and process them. If my script couldn't process both parameters then it wouldn't even get to the line where it would send back an image. The best workaround I could come up with was adding this code in my page.php file:
$pram1 = $_GET['pram1'];
$pram2 = $_GET['pram2'];
if(!isset($pram2)){
$pram2 = $_GET['amp;pram2'];
}
// now regardless of the email client both parameters contain a value to process
if((isset($pram1)) && (isset($pram2))){
header("Content-Type: image/png");
readfile("full-server-path-to-image.png");
}
I know is sounds pretty simple, but I had been scratching my head over this for way too long. Originally, I was convinced it was something to do with how the message was encoded before it was sent out. Never thought it would be Outlook changing my code. On second though Microsoft never likes to make things easy.....never gets old...lol
To make life difficult, the client I'm working for is using a really large yet old system which runs on PHP4.0 and they're not wanting any additional libraries added.
I'm trying to send out an email through PHP with both an attachment and accompanying text/html content but I'm unable to send both in one email.
This sends the attachment:
$headers = "Content-Type: text/csv;\r\n name=\"result.csv\"\r\n Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n Content-Disposition: attachment\r\n boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";
$output = $attachment;
mail($emailTo, $emailSubject, $output, $headers);
This sends text/html:
$headers = "Content-Type: text/html; charset='iso-8859-1'\r\n";
$output = $emailBody; // $emailBody contains the HTML code.
This sends an attachment containing the text/html along with the attachment contents:
$headers = "Content-Type: text/html; charset='iso-8859-1'\r\n".$emailBody."\r\n";
$headers = "Content-Type: text/csv;\r\n name=\"result.csv\"\r\n Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n Content-Disposition: attachment\r\n boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";
$output = $attachment;
What I need to know is how can I send an email with text/html in the email body and also add an attachment to it. I'm sure I'm missing something really simple here!
Thanks in advance.
Okay, I've finally cracked it! For reference:
$emailBody .= "<html><body>Blah</body></html>";
$emailSubject = "Subject";
$emailCSV = "\"Col1\", \"Col2\"\r\n"; // etc.
$attachment = $emailCSV;
$boundary = md5(time());
$header = "From: Name <address#address.com>\r\n";
$header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$header .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed;boundary=\"" . $boundary . "\"\r\n";
$output = "--".$boundary."\r\n";
$output .= "Content-Type: text/csv; name=\"result.csv\";\r\n";
$output .= "Content-Disposition: attachment;\r\n\r\n";
$output .= $attachment."\r\n\r\n";
$output .= "--".$boundary."\r\n";
$output .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=\"utf-8\"\r\n";
$output .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\r\n\r\n";
$output .= $emailBody."\r\n\r\n";
$output .= "--".$boundary."--\r\n\r\n";
mail($emailTo, $emailSubject, $output, $header);
Trying to send attachments using the PHP mail() function is an exercise in frustration; put simply, it's just not worth the effort. I would never ever suggest even attempting it, even in current PHP versions. I would always use a library like phpMailer.
I know you said you aren't allowed to use a third party library, but in this case, you would be crazy not to use one. We're talking about the difference between one day of work and a year; it's that big a deal. The PHP mail() function is incredibly difficult to work with, and trying to write code with it to send attachments from scratch will leave you with brittle, bug-ridden code that takes forever to get working reliably in all cases. This is why libraries like phpMailer exist.
So I suggest that regardless of what they want you to do, you should download phpMailer -- the PHP4 version is still available -- and see if it works for you. (The download page even still has the really old versions, so you should be able to go far enough back in time to find one that works with PHP 4.0. It shouldn't take you any time at all to get a simple demo up and running with it. Demonstrate that it works; that may well soften their stance against third party libraries.
(If it doesn't soften their stance, then there's not much hope of this project ever being completed in a sane amount of time. In that case, the best you can do is add a few extra zeros to your quote for the project price and grit your teeth)
I am trying to send an e-mail using the following code:
$htmlHeaders="";
$htmlHeaders = "MIME-Version: 1.0 \r\n";
$htmlHeaders .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 \r\n";
$htmlHeaders .= "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion(). "\r\n";
$htmlHeaders .= "From: System <test#test.com> \r\n";
mail("dest#example.com","Subject",'New test <img src="http://www.someserver/image.jpg">',$htmlHeaders);
what I noticed is that for some images (I always link the images through an http link) are working fine and the mail is delivered correctly, while for some other images I get problems; that is, the image is NOT delivered.
For example, trying to use this image wont work: http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/2601/gitaallago.png
I guess it is a problem of headers, but I really do not understand how to fix this.
Any hints?
Often times the problem is the mail client. Some mail clients by default will only download images under a certain size, some will not download any images at all.
Your best bet (though it can be quite a lot more work than what you're doing now) is to attach the image to the email with a CID and reference the image that way (<img src="cid:whatever">)
It will increase the size of your email because you have to transmit the image with each email, but it will display in far more mail clients that way.
Is the correct MIME type being served by the server for the images?
You didn't make it clear whether or not you're saving the image on your server, and linking to it from there, or linking to it straight from Imageshack (in this example.) If you're linking straight from Imageshack, then MIME types definitely aren't the problem. Worth looking into, however, if you're hosting the images on your server.
I'm trying to send an email from the php mail command. I've been able to what I've tried so far, but can't seem to get it to work with an attachment. I've looked around the web and the best code I've found led me to this:
$fileatt_name = 'JuneFlyer.pdf';
$fileatt_type = 'application/pdf';
$fileatt = 'JuneFlyer.pdf';
$file = fopen($fileatt,'rb');
$data = fread($file,filesize($fileatt));
$data = chunk_split(base64_encode($data));
$MAEmail = "myemail#sbcglobal.net";
mail("$email_address", "$subject", "$message",
"From: ".$MAEmail."\n".
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n".
"Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1".
"--{$mime_boundary}\n" .
"Content-Type: {$fileatt_type};\n" .
" name=\"{$fileatt_name}\"\n" .
"Content-Disposition: attachment;\n" .
" filename=\"{$fileatt_name}\"\n" .
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n\n" .$data. "\n\n" );
There are two problems when I do this. First, the contents of the email dissappear.
Second, there is an error on the attachment. "Adobe Reader could not open June_flyer.pdf because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded)"
Any ideas of how to deal with this?
Thanks,
JB
The very best way how to deal with mail and php is use a reliable well tested library - email with attachments can easily get very nasty. I personally recommend SwiftMailer.
may be problem is within header. if you want to learn the hard way then figure out how you can configure diffrent mimetypes with headers and do the stuff.
or else easy way is use PHPmailer or other email libraries which will do the hard part for you.
One process to learn the correct email format for sending attachments is to try sending yourself an email (with attachment) using Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.
Then view the source of that email. Try copying and pasting that message source into your PHP code (with a little trimming of headers like To and From and Subject that the mail() function already handles) and bada-bing, you have all you need right in front of you.
You can make it dynamic by replacing the chunks of stuff (HTML part, Text part, attachment) with your unique chunks or variables.
Then no fancy library is needed.