php send e-mail with attachment

Question

I can't seem to find the problem with this php function i wrote that should send an e-mail with attachment. I've been struggling with it for quite a while.

function myMail($to, $subject, $mail_msg, $filename, $contentType){

    $random_hash = md5(date('r', time()));
    $headers = "From: [email protected]\r\nReply-To: ".$to;
    $headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: ".$contentType.
        "; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";

    $attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents($filename)));
    ob_start();

    echo "
--PHP-mixed-$random_hash
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"PHP-alt-$random_hash\"

--PHP-alt-$random_hash
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"utf-8\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

$mail_msg

--PHP-alt-$random_hash

--PHP-mixed-$random_hash--
Content-Type: text/plain; name=\"$filename\" 
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 
Content-Disposition: attachment 

$attachment
--PHP-mixed-$random_hash--
";
    $message = ob_get_clean();
    $mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );
    return $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed";
}

Edit The problem is that the message of the mail is mixed with the file and send as an attachment.

Baggywrinkle

You're not saying what doesn't work. – Sisera

Include the whole output, headers included (minus base64 encoded file) – Beck

Answer 1

Artefacto made me look at the output with more attention and i've found the fix:

function myMail($to, $subject, $mail_msg, $filename, $contentType, $pathToFilename){
    $random_hash = md5(date('r', time()));
    $headers = "From: [email protected]\r\nReply-To: ".$to;
    $headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";
    $attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents($pathToFilename)));
    ob_start();
 echo "
--PHP-mixed-$random_hash
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"PHP-alt-$random_hash\"

--PHP-alt-$random_hash
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"utf-8\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

$mail_msg

--PHP-alt-$random_hash--

--PHP-mixed-$random_hash
Content-Type: $contentType; name=\"$filename\" 
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 
Content-Disposition: attachment 

$attachment
--PHP-mixed-$random_hash--
";
$message = ob_get_clean();
$fh=fopen('log.txt','w');
fwrite($fh,$message);
$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers );
return $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed";
}

Baggywrinkle

Answer 2

I've just looked at a couple of my emails, and I notice the the final attachment boundary ends with '--', while the opening boundary marker does not. In your code, you have:

--PHP-mixed-$random_hash--
Content-Type: text/plain; name=\"$filename\" 
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 
Content-Disposition: attachment 

$attachment
--PHP-mixed-$random_hash--

Perhaps it should be:

--PHP-mixed-$random_hash
Content-Type: text/plain; name=\"$filename\" 
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 
Content-Disposition: attachment 

$attachment
--PHP-mixed-$random_hash--

Have a look at the example here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Multipart_messages

Marten

@Sisera Thanks, but perhaps my efforts were in vain. Despite arriving at the correct solution, it looks as though the same solution was arrived at independently :-( – Marten

Answer 3

Unless you are doing this to learn about the internal workings of MIME mails, the standard answer is to use a mailer library like PHPMailer or Swiftmailer that can deal with attachments out of the box.

SwiftMailer Examples on how to attach files are here.

Sisera

Answer 4

These are the headers I use and they have always worked like a charm.

$base = basename($_FILES['upload']['name']);
$file = fopen($randname_path,'rb');
$size = filesize($randname_path);
$data = fread($file,$size);
fclose($file);
$data = chunk_split(base64_encode($data));

//boundary
$div = "==Multipart_Boundary_x".md5(time())."x";
//headers
$head = "From: $from\n".
        "MIME-Version: 1.0\n".
        "Content-Type: multipart/mixed;\n".
        " boundary=\"$div\"";
//message
$mess = "--$div\n".
        "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\n".
        "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\n".
        "$message\n\n".
        "--$div\n".
        "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"$base\"\n".
        "Content-Description: $base\n".
        "Content-Disposition: attachment;\n".
        " filename=\"$base\"; size=$size;\n".
        "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n\n".
        "$data\n\n".
        "--$div\n";
$return = "-f$from";

http://asdlog.com/Create_form_to_send_email_with_attachment

Kathiekathleen