I need to send emails using PHP's mail() function. The code I am using is this:
$email_message = chunk_split(base64_encode($email_message));
$headers = "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n\r\n";
mail($to, $subject, $email_message, $headers);
There is a pound sterling symbol in the email which is not handled properly, i.e. recipient receives incorrect symbol. As its to do with character encoding and I am not sure how to set it to tell the email client how the characters are being encoded and how to deal with the pound symbol correctly. Can this information be put in the headers?
Are you correctly setting the encoding on the email? This is done by setting
'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'
in the message's headers.
Plenty of documentation here if you scroll down: http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php
If you have pound signs coming out as  then look below
$costsum = "£".$costsum; (Does not work)
$costsum = "£".$costsum; (Does not work)
$costsum = "#163;".$costsum; (Does not work)
One answer I found was this!
$costsum = "\243".$costsum;
The \243 is a pound sign in whatever encoding that is.
I tried all the pages with UTF-8 and that didn't work either.
It was used to email a spreadsheet.
Related
I am attempting to use the built-in "mail" function in PHP, which has worked fine for my needs in a hosted LAMP environment with SiteGround. In this case I am running my own server on Windows, and my messages arrive with a spurious character (a capital 'B') prepended to the body text. I have tried replacing $mailBody in the call with a simple 'abc' string, and the spurious capital 'B' is still prepended. I am guessing that the problem is caused by a character-encoding mismatch. I have tried altering the "Content-type" in the header from text/plain to text/html, and the charset from windows-1251 to utf-8, neither of which make any difference.
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=windows-1251\r\n";
$headers .= "From: $confirmation_sender\r\n";
$bMailSuccess = mail ($strEmail, $business_name . ' Booking Confirmation', $mailBody, $headers);
php.ini
SMTP = internalmail
As you can see, mail is directed to a server called 'internalmail', and the logs on this server suggest that the spurious character is already part of the body text that it receives. Can anyone suggest a fix (preferably other than "install some other mail client")?
I'm using the mail function on php to send a confirmation email. It actually works, but just for some mails. For example, if you recieve that on a gmail it's fine, but on a college mail it appears ? instead of special characters.
The problem is that that mail includes a validation link,which looks like www.myweb.com/confirmation.php?passkey=(passkey) and if the mail and the special characters aren't send properly this link is also wrong (the = doesn't appear).
I've already tried writting
iconv_set_encoding("internal_encoding", "UTF-8");
on top of the mail function, but it doesn't work. What can it be?
Thanks for your help!
Try utf-8 encoding in header
For example:
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8\r\n";
Character sets are driving me round the bend!
My database is utf8_general_ci and the tables within it are utf8_unicode_ci.
All my PHP pages have
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
in the head.
When I type a euro symbol (€) in the PHP page and input it to the database it appears in phpMyAdmin as €
When I use a PHP page to copy it from the database, it reappears as €
So far so good, but when I write am html email using PHP, no matter what I do it comes out in the email as €
I've tried specifying the character set in the html email but it doesn't work. Probably because email clients take their character set from the mail server and not the headers.
I've also got issues with accented letters and the like, but they are being written into the text so I could overcome them by using é for é, and so on. Messy, but not impossible.
Surely there's a better way!
MY SOLUTION (SORT OF)
Thanks to all who contributed. I have tried all ways to specify the character set to utf-8 (in the mail headers, in the html head, and both) but the message still arrives in iso. So it seems the information I got from elsewhere was right: character set is defined by the server.
I have had to settle for typing things like é each time I want é into the fixed text, which is cumbersome but at least it works.
For the euro symbol, I have wrapped the variable in the htmlentities function. It works, but I will have to remember to do it with any other variables taken from the database if I encounter similar problems in similar files. It would have been easier to wrap the function around the entire html body but that doesn't work, presumably because it does funny things with the .
Check the encoding in your text editor. Crazy things can happen if this is wrong!
For MySQL, see mysql_set_charset.
Emails actually get their character set from the Content-Type header, not from the email server. Make sure you set this header to an appropriate value, such as Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8". See also this question.
And keep in mind that for HTML, you can use $encoded = htmlentities( $string, ENT_QUOTES, 'utf-8' ) so that all characters which have HTML character entity equivalents are translated into these entities.
I guess that the correct answer for you is just setting utf-8 charset for the e-mail:
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers.= "From: =?utf-8?b?".base64_encode($from_name)."?= <".$from_a.">\r\n";
$headers.= "Content-Type: text/plain;charset=utf-8\r\n";
$headers.= "Reply-To: $reply\r\n";
$headers.= "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion();
mail($to, $s, $body, $headers);
If you open the email source in your client (ctrl+u in thunderbird). You will see a Content-Type header. This should be something like:
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
If your email contains multiple parts your need to add that header to html part.
Header values need to be encoded separately (each line).
Subject: =?utf-8?B?...?=
For the html content you can just use htmlentities() but this will not work for the headers or a text email.
Im sending a mail using php, and the subject of the mail has accents.
Im receiving weird characters in Outlook instead the accented chars. If i see the email in a web email client i see the subject perfect.
This is the code that im using to send the email:
$to = 'whateveremail#whatever.com';
$subject = '[WEBSITE] áccent – tésts';
$message = '<p>Test message</p>
$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers.= 'From:equipothermomix#thermomix.com' . "\r\n";
$headers.= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
mail($to, $subject, $message , $headers);
How i could solve the issue, do i have to use another charset?
The only reliable way to send e-mail is using plain 7 bit ASCII so you need to encode strings properly when you want to use anything else. In your case, [WEBSITE] áccent – tésts should be encoded as (e.g.) =?windows-1252?B?W1dFQlNJVEVdIOFjY2VudCCWIHTpc3Rz?=, where the string splits as:
=?windows-1252?B?W1dFQlNJVEVdIOFjY2VudCCWIHTpc3Rz?=
^ ^ ^
| | |
Charset | Data
|
Base64
Check:
echo base64_decode('W1dFQlNJVEVdIOFjY2VudCCWIHTpc3Rz'); // [WEBSITE] áccent – tésts
This is just an example of one of the possible ways to encode non-ASCII strings.
When sending e-mail, there are many little details like this that need attention. That's why sooner or later you end up using a proper e-mail package like Swift Mailer or PHPMailer.
If there is a mix of encoding types, special characters are destroyed.
PHP messing with HTML Charset Encoding
PHP also has an option for encoding messages.
mb_language('uni'); // mail() encoding
PHP - Multibyte String
http://php.net/manual/en/mbstring.overload.php
http://php.net/manual/en/ref.mbstring.php
My PHP script sends email to users and when the email arrives to their mailboxes, the subject line ($subject) has characters like a^£ added to the end of my subject text. This is obviously and encoding problem. The email message content itself is fine, just the subject line is broken.
I have searched all over but can’t find how to encode my subject properly.
This is my header. Notice that I’m using Content-Type with charset=utf-8 and Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit.
//set all necessary headers
$headers = "From: $sender_name<$from>\n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: $sender_name<$from>\n";
$headers .= "X-Sender: $sender_name<$from>\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP4\n"; //mailer
$headers .= "X-Priority: 3\n"; //1 UrgentMessage, 3 Normal
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
$headers .= "X-MSMail-Priority: High\n";
$headers .= "Importance: 3\n";
$headers .= "Date: $date\n";
$headers .= "Delivered-to: $to\n";
$headers .= "Return-Path: $sender_name<$from>\n";
$headers .= "Envelope-from: $sender_name<$from>\n";
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n";
Update For a more practical and up-to-date answer, have a look at Palec’s answer.
The specified character encoding in Content-Type does only describe the character encoding of the message body but not the header. You need to use the encoded-word syntax with either the quoted-printable encoding or the Base64 encoding:
encoded-word = "=?" charset "?" encoding "?" encoded-text "?="
You can use imap_8bit for the quoted-printable encoding and base64_encode for the Base64 encoding:
"Subject: =?UTF-8?B?".base64_encode($subject)."?="
"Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?".imap_8bit($subject)."?="
TL;DR
$preferences = ['input-charset' => 'UTF-8', 'output-charset' => 'UTF-8'];
$encoded_subject = iconv_mime_encode('Subject', $subject, $preferences);
$encoded_subject = substr($encoded_subject, strlen('Subject: '));
mail($to, $encoded_subject, $message, $headers);
or
mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');
$encoded_subject = mb_encode_mimeheader($subject, 'UTF-8', 'B', "\r\n", strlen('Subject: '));
mail($to, $encoded_subject, $message, $headers);
Problem and solution
The Content-Type and Content-Transfer-Encoding headers apply only to the body of your message. For headers, there is a mechanism for specifying their encoding specified in RFC 2047.
You should encode your Subject via iconv_mime_encode(), which exists as of PHP 5:
$preferences = ["input-charset" => "UTF-8", "output-charset" => "UTF-8"];
$encoded_subject = iconv_mime_encode("Subject", $subject, $preferences);
Change input-charset to match the encoding of your string $subject. You should leave output-charset as UTF-8. Before PHP 5.4, use array() instead of [].
Now $encoded_subject is (without trailing newline)
Subject: =?UTF-8?B?VmVyeSBsb25nIHRleHQgY29udGFpbmluZyBzcGVjaWFsIGM=?=
=?UTF-8?B?aGFyYWN0ZXJzIGxpa2UgxJvFocSNxZnFvsO9w6HDrcOpPD4/PSsqIHA=?=
=?UTF-8?B?cm9kdWNlcyBzZXZlcmFsIGVuY29kZWQtd29yZHMsIHNwYW5uaW5nIG0=?=
=?UTF-8?B?dWx0aXBsZSBsaW5lcw==?=
for $subject containing:
Very long text containing special characters like ěščřžýáíé<>?=+* produces several encoded-words, spanning multiple lines
How does it work?
The iconv_mime_encode() function splits the text, encodes each piece separately into an <encoded-word> token and folds the whitespace between them. Encoded word is =?<charset>?<encoding>?<encoded-text>?= where:
<encoding> is either B (for Base 64 – see base64_encode()) or Q (for Quoted-printable – see quoted_printable_encode()),
<encoded-text> is string encoded with <encoding>, which has charset <charset> after being decoded.
You can decode =?CP1250?B?QWhvaiwgc3bsdGU=?= into UTF-8 string Ahoj, světe (Hello, world in Czech) via iconv("CP1250", "UTF-8", base64_decode("QWhvaiwgc3bsdGU=")) or directly via iconv_mime_decode("=?CP1250?B?QWhvaiwgc3bsdGU=?=", 0, "UTF-8").
Encoding into encoded words is more complicated, because the spec requires each encoded-word token to be at most 75 bytes long and each line containing any encoded-word token must be at most 76 bytes long (including blank at the start of a continuation line). Don’t implement the encoding yourself. All you really need to know is that iconv_mime_encode() respects the spec.
Interesting related reading is the Wikipedia article Unicode and email.
Alternatives
A rudimentary option is to use only a restricted set of characters. ASCII is guaranteed to work. ISO Latin 1 (ISO-8859-1), as user2250504 suggested, will probably work too, because it is often used as fallback when no encoding is specified. But those character sets are very small and you’ll probably be unable to encode all the characters you’ll want. Moreover, the RFCs say nothing about whether Latin 1 should work or not.
You can also use mb_encode_mimeheader(), as Paul Norman answered, but it’s easy to use it incorrectly.
You must use mb_internal_encoding() to set the mbstring functions’ internally used encoding. The mb_* functions expect input strings to be in this encoding. Beware: The second parameter of mb_encode_mimeheader() has nothing to do with the input string (despite what the manual says). It corresponds to the <charset> in the encoded word (see How does it work? above). The input string is recoded from the internal encoding to this one before being passed to the B or Q encoding.
Setting internal encoding might not be needed since PHP 5.6, because the underlying mbstring.internal_encoding configuration option had been deprecated in favor of the default_charset option, which has been set to UTF-8 by default, since. Note that this is just a default and it may be inappropriate to rely on defaults in your code.
You must include the header name and colon in the input string. The RFC imposes a strong limit on line length and it must hold for the first line, too! An alternative is to fiddle with the fifth parameter ($indent; last one as of September 2015), but this is even less convenient.
The implementation might have bugs. Even if used correctly, you might get broken output. At least this is what many comments on the manual page say. I have not managed to find any problem, but I know implementation of encoded words is tricky. If you find potential or actual bugs in mb_encode_mimeheader() or iconv_mime_encode(), please, let me know in the comments.
There is also at least one upside to using mb_encode_mimeheader(): it does not always encode all the header contents, which saves space and leaves the text human-readable. The encoding is required only for the non-ASCII parts. The output analogous to the iconv_mime_encode() example above is:
Subject: Very long text containing special characters like
=?UTF-8?B?xJvFocSNxZnFvsO9w6HDrcOpPD4/PSsqIHByb2R1Y2VzIHNldmVyYWwgZW5j?=
=?UTF-8?B?b2RlZC13b3Jkcywgc3Bhbm5pbmcgbXVsdGlwbGUgbGluZXM=?=
Usage example of mb_encode_mimeheader():
mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');
$encoded_subject = mb_encode_mimeheader("Subject: $subject", 'UTF-8');
$encoded_subject = substr($encoded_subject, strlen('Subject: '));
mail($to, $encoded_subject, $message, $headers);
This is an alternative to the snippet in TL;DR on top of this post. Instead of just reserving the space for Subject: , it actually puts it there and then removes it in order to be able to use it with the mail()’s stupid interface.
If you like mbstring functions better than the iconv ones, you might want to use mb_send_mail(). It uses mail() internally, but encodes subject and body of the message automatically. Again, use with care.
Headers other than Subject need different treatment
Note that you must not assume that encoding the whole contents of a header is OK for all headers that may contain non-ASCII characters. E.g. From, To, Cc, Bcc and Reply-To may contain names for the addresses they contain, but only the names may be encoded, not the addresses. The reason is that <encoded-word> token may replace just <text>, <ctext> and <word> tokens, and only under certain circumstances (see §5 of RFC 2047).
Encoding of non-ASCII text in other headers is a related but different question. If you wish to know more about this topic, search. If you find no answer, ask another question and point me to it in the comments.
mb_encode_mimeheader() for UTF-8 strings can be useful here, e.g.
$subject = mb_encode_mimeheader($subjectText,"UTF-8");