Email message: output buffer or variable

**bryceowen** · bryceowen, September 2nd, 2009 01:34 PM

I've run into a little problem with sending email in PHP. I've been creating the body of the message using ob_get_clean() and it works just fine for me. However, it was asked of me why I wasn't just writing the message directly to the variable. I thought I'd give it a try and I'm getting a weird result.

Using the ob_get method, my email creates and sends just fine (multi-part with attachments), but if I try to write the body directly into the variable, the email message that comes through appears as plain text (it sends the raw information without actually formatting or anything).

Here's a sample message I test. It sends just fine and comes across as it should:

PHP Code:

 <?PHP
$random_hash=md5(date('r',time()));
$to="you@your.domain";
$subject="Test message.";
$headers="From: you@your.domain\r\nReply-To: you@your.domain";
$headers.="\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";

//Message collected as output buffer
ob_start();
?>
--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

This is a simple text message.

--PHP-alt-<?PHP echo $random_hash;?>

Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<html><body><div style="text-align:center;">This is a complex HTML message.</div></body></html>

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

--PHP-mixed-<?PHP echo $random_hash;?>--
<?PHP
$message=ob_get_clean();
//End of message

$mail_sent=@mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
echo $mail_sent ? "Message sent." : "Great, you broke it.";
?>

And here's the same message, but with the $message written as a variable directly rather than pulled from the ob:

PHP Code:

 <?PHP
$random_hash=md5(date('r',time()));
$to="you@your.domain";
$subject="Test message.";
$headers="From: you@your.domain\r\nReply-To: you@your.domain";
$headers.="\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\"";

//Message created as variable
$message="--PHP-mixed-$random_hash

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

--PHP-alt-$random_hash

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

This is a simple text message.

--PHP-alt-$random_hash

Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<html><body><div style=\"text-align:center;\">This is a complex HTML message.</div></body></html>

--PHP-alt-$random_hash--

--PHP-mixed-$random_hash--";
//End of message

$mail_sent=@mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
echo $mail_sent ? "Message sent." : "Great, you broke it.";
?>

If you run them, you'll see what I mean by raw message.

Could someone tell me what I'm doing wrong in the latter file?

***EDIT***
Checking the two $message variables, I found they are both string-type and, when echoed, APPEAR identical, but strlen of the $message from the broken file is two characters longer than the first (working) one. I don't know where those two characters are coming from. As I said, they APPEAR identical when echoed...

**jmurrayhead** · jmurrayhead, September 2nd, 2009 01:52 PM

It looks like you're missing the text/html Content-Type in $headers, i.e.:

Code:

    $headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\r\n".

**bryceowen** · bryceowen, September 2nd, 2009 02:59 PM

The message isn't just HTML, though. It's both plain and HTML.

The headers show "multipart/mixed" and in the message, the boundaries for the text/plan and text/html appear around their respective areas. (The format I use in this email example is the one I use for sending attachments, but it works just as well for text only.)

**jmurrayhead** · jmurrayhead, September 3rd, 2009 09:41 AM

Gotcha...

I found the following example. Try to plug in your requirements to this. However, this uses the output buffer...and I see nothing wrong with that:

PHP Code:

 <?php 
//define the receiver of the email 
$to = 'youraddress@example.com'; 
//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: webmaster@example.com\r\nReply-To: webmaster@example.com"; 
//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"; 
?>

**bryceowen** · bryceowen, September 3rd, 2009 03:49 PM

That's almost exactly what I have in my first file (sans the attachment part).

I guess the short answer is that there's no way to send email properly formatted without using the output buffer.

**jmurrayhead** · jmurrayhead, September 3rd, 2009 03:54 PM

I'm not completely sure...but every decent example I've found uses it. Like I said, I really don't see anything wrong with that.

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