PHP Send email with PDF attachment without creating the file?

Question

I generate PDF's using FPDF and I need to email it to a customer.

Since I can generate the PDF's from the DB, I don't want to save all the PDF's locally as it will clutter up my server.

I want to be able to send an email with a PDF attached. Do I need to create a temporary file, then delete it every time or is there another way to do it?

Glottalized

Answer 1

    <?php 
//define the receiver of the email 
$to = '[email protected]'; 
//define the subject of the email 
$subject = 'Test email with attachment'; 
//create a boundary string. It must be unique 
//so we use the MD5 algorithm to generate a random hash 
$random_hash = md5(date('r', time())); 
//define the headers we want passed. Note that they are separated with \r\n 
$headers = "From: [email protected]\r\nReply-To: [email protected]"; 
//add boundary string and mime type specification 
$headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\""; 
//read the atachment file contents into a string,
//encode it with MIME base64,
//and split it into smaller chunks
$attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents('attachment.zip'))); 
//define the body of the message. 
ob_start(); //Turn on output buffering 
?> 
--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>  
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>" 

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>  
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" 
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!!! 
This is simple text email message. 

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>  
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" 
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<h2>Hello World!</h2> 
<p>This is something with <b>HTML</b> formatting.</p> 

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>-- 

--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>  
Content-Type: application/zip; name="attachment.zip"  
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64  
Content-Disposition: attachment  

<?php echo $attachment; ?> 
--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>-- 

<?php 
//copy current buffer contents into $message variable and delete current output buffer 
$message = ob_get_clean(); 
//send the email 
$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers ); 
//if the message is sent successfully print "Mail sent". Otherwise print "Mail failed" 
echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed"; 
?>

you will notice this line $attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents('attachment.zip'))); and you change to suit your in memory file.

Melessa

Intriguing.. Thanks a lot! I found that FPDF can return a string, rather than writing to a file: fpdf.org/en/doc/output.htm Is that what you would use? – Glottalized

Answer 2

It's definitely possible. You could take any PHP mailer class that can handle attachments, and rewrite the addAttachment function where it reads data from file to accept your variable instead.

Zend_Mail seems to be able to digest strings as attachments directly, without any rewriting.

Advisory