Sending HTML email using PHP [header problems]

3stripe · May 2006

Hi folks,

I'm having problems generating an html email... something's not right in the code below but I can't figure out what... when I receive the email in gmail it's all wrong.

Any ideas as usual on fixing my php idiocy are much appreciated

Cheers!

James


//Get email address of a friend, and sends them an html email
// Get the email address from flash
$Email1 = $HTTP_POST_VARS['email1'] ;
// Email starts here
$ToEmail = $Email1;
$ToName = $Email1;
$Yourname = "Bob Smith";
$Youremail = "email@email.com";
$ToSubject = "EMAIL SUBJECT HERE";
$html_content = '
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>
<h1>Test email only</h1>
<p>Blah blah blah</p>
</body>
</html>';
// To send HTML mail, the Content-type header must be set
$Headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$Headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
$Headers .= 'From: '.$Yourname.'  <".$Youremail.">' . "\r\n";
$Message = $html_content;
// Send email
mail($ToName." <".$ToEmail.">",$ToSubject, $Message, $Headers);
echo "status=ok";
?>

3stripe · May 2006

PS. the email1 variable is coming from a Flash file, but that's working fine

NickE · May 2006

To qoute php.net:

As such, the to parameter should not be an address in the form of "Something <someone@example.com>". The mail command may not parse this properly while talking with the MTA.

But I don't think that's the problem... You could also try replacing your Windows newlines with instances of \n:

Note: If messages are not received, try using a LF (\n) only. Some poor quality Unix mail transfer agents replace LF by CRLF automatically (which leads to doubling CR if CRLF is used). This should be a last resort, as it does not comply with RFC 2822.

My only other thoughts are that the newline before the doctype is messing it up, or the doctype itself.

3stripe · May 2006

Hey thanks for the pointers (too many late nights starting to scramble my brain). I'm going to try both of those suggestions.... if Something <someone@example.com> is not correct, what is then, just the email address? Cheers SirNot.

NickE · May 2006

what is then, just the email address?

Well actually, now that I read over that section again, it seems only to apply to Windows servers, so if you know you're running a *nix server than you shouldn't need to worry about it. However, if not, then I'd assume you'd want to use just the mail address.

3stripe · May 2006

Ok, yeah, user@example.com is better than having them not matching, that makes sense.... let's see what happens now... Oops, beat me to it (still reckon that a "see who's typing" extension would be good)

3stripe · May 2006

Ok... the html formatting is working... thanks dude

One problem left - something in the from email address is not right - it's appearing in the email like this:

From: Joe Bloggs <".$Youremail."@z1lnx007.web.vi.net>

So somethings not quite right here... can't work out where it is picking up the host domain from either!

Minisweeper · May 2006

You seem to swap which kind of ' or " you're using half way through the line...?
$Headers .= 'From: '.$Yourname.' <".$Youremail.">' . "\r\n";
Perhaps either use
$Headers .= "From: $Yourname <$YourEmail>\r\n";
or
$Headers .= 'From: '.$Yourname.'<'.$Youremail.'>'."\r\n";

(i think)

3stripe · May 2006

Hot dog!

The second one worked (I've switched to just "\n"s for now)

Cheers folks. Now onto the fun part of prettifying the html...

3stripe · May 2006

Hmm so how can I include a text-only version as well, for the less well equipped email readers..... ?

Not sure about this one - having just tested on my pipex webmail, I don't see anything at all in this email which isn't good!

3stripe · May 2006

Hmm, multi-part email php looks a bit complex for this time o' night...

Minisweeper · May 2006

haha. I was always under the impression text only emails had to be made seperately and then mailed to people depending whether they wanted html or text? I dont think you can send an email which picks whether it's to be html or text when it's get there? I could be wrong though.

But yeah i'm definitely hitting that night time barrier.

ithcy · May 2006

you can send them both in one email. that's the mhtml standard. the client displays the html part if it supports html, otherwise it displays the plaintext part.

some example code that i just picked up off the net:

$boundary = "nextPart";

$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "From: Me <sales@mysite.com>\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary = $boundary\r\n";

//text version
$headers .= "\n--$boundary\n"; // beginning \n added to separate previous content
$headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$headers .= "This is the plain version";

//html version
$headers .= "\n--$boundary\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$headers .= "This is the <b>HTML</b> version";

mail("me@mymail@mac.com", "An HTML Message", "", $headers);

3stripe · May 2006

Cheers ithcy, that's a cleaner chunk of code than I managed to find anywhere :) And it works, as well. Super.

Minisweeper · May 2006

*Learns something new every day*

3stripe · May 2006

Got it all sorted - live at http://tinyurl.com/huv57 (the game sends out an email to a friend after you've played it)

Sending HTML email using PHP [header problems]

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