Sending Email with content from PHP/Mysql - php

Question

I want to send emails where the data is from a php/mySQL query.
I know that html will render in the email but i don't think the php codes will.
So is there any way where i can send emails with content queried from a mySQL DB ?
I already search here, there is one topic that covers it but the person who advised suggested a pdf export or to use a 3rd party tool which in my case are not applicable.
Thank you for the help guys :)

Answer 1

Use PHPMailer to generate the email on the server. It makes it very easy to generate multi-part messages (plaintext + html, with attachments and embedded/inline images). Basically:
// set up PHPMailer
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->SetFrom('you#yourserver.com');
$mail->AddReplyTo('you#somewhereelse.com');
$mail->Subject('Your profile');
$mail->IsHTML(TRUE);
// do your database query
$con = connect_to_database();
$stmt = run_database_query($con, "SELECT ... FROM ...");
$data = fetch_from_database($stmt);
// set the email address
$mail->AddAddress($data['email'], $data['fullname']);
// html content for smart email clients
$html = <<<EOL
<h1>Welcome</h1>
<p>Your username is {$data['username']}.</p>
EOL;
// plain text alternate content
$text = <<<EOL
Welcome
Your username is {$data['username']}.
EOL;
// add the content to the mail
$mail->MsgHTML($html);
// add alternate content
$mail->AltBody($text);
// send the mail
if ($mail->Send()) {
// mail sent correctly
} else {
die("Uhoh, could not send to {$mail['email']}:" . $mail->ErrorInfo);
}

Answer 2

To avoid spam issues you can wrap the PHPMailer in a class and instantiate that at every e-mail address read from the database table.
For each email address you can create a new instance and do kind of a ->setMailAddr($mail,$fullName) and after send the e-mail destroy this instance.
The ideal is to place a new instance at every POST. In this case, you can put a FORM into the page.